SS Czechoslovakia Victory was laid down under U.S. Maritime Commission contract as by Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation, Portland, Oregon, 25 November 1943; launched 20 January 1944; sponsored by Miss Barbara Vickery; and delivered to her operator, American Hawaiian Steamship Corp., 11 March 1944. In 1948 she was renamed the Lt. James E. Robinson (AKV 3).

SS Czechoslovakia Victory was owned by the Maritime Commission, she served on the merchant sealanes under the control of the War Shipping Administration during the remainder of World War II. She was operated by the American-Hawaiian Steamship Corporation. On 8 August 1946 with the war over she was chartered to Black Diamond Steamship Corporation. On 17 November 1947 she was laid up in the National Defense Reserve Fleet at the James River. On 3 May 1948 she was removed from the Reserve Fleet and transferred to the Army Transportation Service as USAT LT. James E. Robinson. On 1 March 1950 she was transferred by the Maritime Administration to the US Navy and assigned to duty under the Military Sea Transportation Service (MSTS).

Manned by a civilian crew, Lt. James E. Robinson operated out of U.S. East Coast ports, primarily New York City, while making runs to ports in West Germany and the British Isles. In September 1953 she expanded the scope of her operations with a supply and logistics run to the Mediterranean which sent her to Greece, Turkey, and Trieste.

She maintained this pattern of Mediterranean and western European cruises during the next 7 years. In addition, during the periods of August 1955, August–September 1956, and July October 1958, she carried cargo to Thule, Greenland, in support of military defense construction projects. Late in November 1958, again expanding her area of operations, she cruised to ports in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Persian Gulf before returning to New York City 31 January 1959.

Lt. James E. Robinson was reclassified AK-274 in May 1959 while operating in the Atlantic Ocean. Between 1 August 1960 and 9 September she steamed from New York to Saigon, South Vietnam, carrying cargo for the American military effort there. After making ports in Formosa, South Korea, and Japan, she returned to New York via the U.S. West Coast 29 November, thence resumed transatlantic cargo service 16 December.

During much of 1962 and 1963 Lt. James E. Robinson took part in special logistics operations in the South Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. Reclassified AG-170 in December 1962, she operated out of Cape Town and Durban, South Africa, and ranged the African coast from Liberia to Kenya.

She continued these operations during the first 4 months of 1964 and returned to New York 31 May via Suez and Rota, Spain. She again reclassified AK-274 on 1 July 1964 and resumed transatlantic cargo runs to western European ports. Continuing this duty through 1969, she remained assigned to the Atlantic Area of MSTS.

Lt. James E. Robinson was placed out of service at an unknown date and was transferred to the Maritime Administration (MARAD), 17 March 1976, for lay up in the National Defense Reserve Fleet. She was struck from the Navy List on 16 January 1981 and was sold for scrap to Andy Exports, Inc., on 26 May 1983.

Sawyer, L.A. and W.H. Mitchell. Victory ships and tankers: The history of the ‘Victory’ type cargo ships and of the tankers built in the United States of America during World War II, Cornell Maritime Press, 1974, 0-87033-182-5.

Sawyer, L.A. and W.H. Mitchell. Victory ships and tankers: The history of the ‘Victory’ type cargo ships and of the tankers built in the United States of America during World War II, Cornell Maritime Press, 1974, 0-87033-182-5.

1.
Czechoslovakia
–
From 1939 to 1945, following its forced division and partial incorporation into Nazi Germany, the state did not de facto exist but its government-in-exile continued to operate. From 1948 to 1990, Czechoslovakia was part of the Soviet bloc with a command economy and its economic status was formalized in membership of Comecon from 1949, and its defense status in the Warsaw Pact of May 1955. A period of liberalization in 1968, known as the Prague Spring, was forcibly ended when the Soviet Union, assisted by several other Warsaw Pact countries. In 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the two states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Form of state 1918–1938, A democratic republic, 1938–1939, After annexation of Sudetenland by Nazi Germany in 1938, the region gradually turned into a state with loosened connections among the Czech, Slovak, and Ruthenian parts. A large strip of southern Slovakia and Carpatho-Ukraine was annexed by Hungary, 1939–1945, The region was split into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Slovak Republic. A government-in-exile continued to exist in London, supported by the United Kingdom, United States and its Allies, after the German invasion of Russia, Czechoslovakia adhered to the Declaration by United Nations and was a founding member of the United Nations. 1946–1948, The country was governed by a government with communist ministers, including the prime minister. Carpathian Ruthenia was ceded to the Soviet Union, 1948–1989, The country became a socialist state under Soviet domination with a centrally planned economy. In 1960, the country became a socialist republic, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It was a state of the Soviet Union. 1989–1990, The federal republic consisted of the Czech Socialist Republic, 1990–1992, Following the Velvet Revolution, the state was renamed the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, consisting of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. Neighbours Austria 1918–1938, 1945–1992 Germany Hungary Poland Romania 1918–1938 Soviet Union 1945–1991 Ukraine 1991–1992 Topography The country was of irregular terrain. The western area was part of the north-central European uplands, the eastern region was composed of the northern reaches of the Carpathian Mountains and lands of the Danube River basin. Climate The weather is mild winters and mild summers, influenced by the Atlantic Ocean from the west, Baltic Sea from the north, and Mediterranean Sea from the south. The area was long a part of the Austro Hungarian Empire until the Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, the new state was founded by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who served as its first president from 14 November 1918 to 14 December 1935. He was succeeded by his ally, Edvard Beneš. The roots of Czech nationalism go back to the 19th century, nationalism became a mass movement in the last half of the 19th century

2.
Maritime Commission
–
It also formed the United States Maritime Service for the training of seagoing ships officers to man the new fleet. The purpose of the Maritime Commission was multifold as described in the Merchant Marine Acts Declaration of Policy. S, Merchant Marine prior to the Act. Another function given to the Commission involved the formation of the U. S. Maritime Service for the training of seagoing ships officers to man the new fleet, the actual licensing of officers and seamen still resided with the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation. President Roosevelt nominated Joseph P. Kennedy first head of the Commission, Kennedy held that position until February 1938 when he left to become US Ambassador to Great Britain. The other four members of the Commission in the years before the beginning of World War II were a mix of retired officers and men from disciplines of law. The man most notable in the group Land brought to the Commission was Commander Howard L. Vickery, USN, as a symbol of the rebirth of the U. S. Upon the U. S. entry into World War II, America was requisitioned by the U. S. Navy and became USS West Point. Most of the C2s and C3s were converted to Navy auxiliaries, notably attack cargo ships, attack transports, the Commission also was tasked with the construction of many hundred military type vessels such as Landing Ship, Tank s and Tacoma-class frigates and large troop transports. By the end of the war, U. S. shipyards working under Maritime Commission contracts had built a total of 5,777 oceangoing merchant, in early 1942 both the training and licensing was transferred to the U. S. S. With the end of World War II, both the Emergency and Long Range shipbuilding programs were terminated as there were far too many merchant vessels now for the Nations peacetime needs. In 1946, the Merchant Ship Sales Act was passed to sell off a portion of the ships previously built during the war to commercial buyers. Although not sold outright to nations that were enemies during the war, for the next 25 years, in ports all around the world one could find dozens of ships which had been built during the war but which now were used in peace. Ships not disposed of through the Ship Sales Act were placed one of eight National Defense Reserve Fleet sites maintained on the Atlantic, Pacific. On several occasions in the postwar years ships in the fleets were activated for both military and humanitarian aid missions. The last major mobilization of the NDRF came during the Vietnam War, since then, a smaller fleet of ships called the Ready Reserve Force has been mobilized to support both humanitarian and military missions. The Maritime Commission was abolished on 24 May 1950, and its functions were divided between the U. S. S. Merchant Marine Academy which had built and opened during World War II. 1936, Merchant Marine Act abolishes Shipping Board and establishes Maritime Commission,1937, Joseph P. S. merchant shipping has been held by many agencies since 1917

3.
Medal of Honor
–
The medal is normally awarded by the President of the United States in the name of the U. S. Congress. There are three versions of the medal, one for the Army, one for the Navy, personnel of the Marine Corps and Coast Guard receive the Navy version. U. S. awards including the Medal of Honor do not have titles and while there is no official abbreviation. The Medal of Honor is the oldest continuously issued combat decoration of the United States armed forces, because the medal is presented in the name of Congress, it is often referred to as the Congressional Medal of Honor. However, the name is Medal of Honor, which began with the U. S. Armys version. Within United States Code the medal is referred to as the Medal of Honor, in 1990, Congress designated March 25 annually as National Medal of Honor Day. The capture saved the fort of West Point from the British Army, although the Badge of Military Merit fell into disuse after the American Revolutionary War, the concept of a military award for individual gallantry by members of the U. S. 539 Certificates were approved for this period and this medal was later replaced by the Army Distinguished Service Medal which was established on January 2,1918. Those Army members who held the Distinguished Service Medal in place of the Certificate of Merit could apply for the Army Distinguished Service Cross effective March 5,1934. There were no awards or medals at the beginning of the Civil War except for the Certificate of Merit which was awarded for the Mexican-American War. Scott however, was strictly against medals being awarded which was the European tradition, after Scott retired in October 1861, the Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, adopted the idea of a decoration to recognize and honor distinguished naval service. Senator James W. Secretary Wells directed the Philadelphia Mint to design the new military decoration, on May 15,1862, the United States Navy Department ordered 175 medals with the words Personal Valor on the back from the U. S. Mint in Philadelphia. Senator Henry Wilson, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, the resolution was approved by Congress and signed into law on July 12,1862. During the war, Townsend would have some medals delivered to recipients with a letter requesting acknowledgement of the Medal of Honor. By mid-November the War Department contracted with Philadelphia silversmith William Wilson and Son, the Army version had The Congress to written on the back of the medal. Both versions were made of copper and coated with bronze, which gave them a reddish tint,1863, Congress made the Medal of Honor a permanent decoration. On March 3, Medals of Honor were authorized for officers of the Army, the Secretary of War first presented the Medal of Honor to six Union Army volunteers on March 25,1863 in his office. 1890, On April 23, the Medal of Honor Legion is established in Washington,1896, The ribbon of the Army version Medal of Honor was redesigned with all stripes being vertical

4.
Portland, Oregon
–
Portland is a port and the largest city in the U. S. state of Oregon and the seat of Multnomah County. It is in the Willamette Valley region of the Pacific Northwest, at the confluence of the Willamette, the city covers 145 square miles and had an estimated population of 632,309 in 2015, making it the 26th most populous city in the United States. Approximately 2,389,228 people live in the Portland metropolitan statistical area and its Combined Statistical Area ranks 17th with a population of 3,022,178. Roughly 60% of Oregons population resides within the Portland metropolitan area, named after Portland, Maine, the Oregon settlement began to be populated in the 1830s near the end of the Oregon Trail. Its water access provided convenient transportation of goods, and the industry was a major force in the citys early economy. At the turn of the 20th century, the city had a reputation as one of the most dangerous cities in the world. After the citys economy experienced a boom during World War II. Beginning in the 1960s, Portland became noted for its liberal political values, and the city has earned a reputation as a bastion of counterculture. According to a 2009 Pew Research Center study, Portland ranks as the eighth most popular American city, the city operates with a commission-based government guided by a mayor and four commissioners as well as Metro, the only directly elected metropolitan planning organization in the United States. The city government is notable for its planning and investment in public transportation. Its climate is marked by warm, dry summers and cool and this climate is ideal for growing roses, and Portland has been called the City of Roses for over a century. Keep Portland Weird is a slogan for the city. During the prehistoric period, the land that would become Portland was flooded after the collapse of glacial dams from Lake Missoula and these massive floods occurred during the last ice age and filled the Willamette Valley with 300 to 400 feet of water. The Chinook people occupying the land which would become Portland were first documented by Meriwether Lewis, before its European settlement, the Portland Basin of the lower Columbia River and Willamette River valleys had been one of the most densely populated regions on the Pacific Coast. Large numbers of settlers began arriving in the Willamette Valley in the 1830s via the Oregon Trail. In the early 1840s a new settlement began emerging ten miles from the mouth of the Willamette River and this community was initially referred to as Stumptown and The Clearing because of the many trees cut down to allow for its growth. In 1843 William Overton saw potential in the new settlement but lacked the funds to file a land claim. For 25 cents Overton agreed to half of the 640-acre site with Asa Lovejoy of Boston

5.
Battle star
–
The service star may also be referred to as a campaign star or battle star depending on which award is authorized the star and the manner in which the device is used for the award. Service stars, Campaign stars, and Battle stars are worn with one point of the star pointing up on the ribbon of a medal. A silver star is worn instead of five bronze stars, a service star is sometimes mistaken for a Bronze Star or Silver Star. The service star is similar to the gold and silver 5⁄16 Inch Stars which may be authorized to be worn on specific individual decorations of certain services to denote additional decorations. Service stars are authorized for the following United States expeditionary medals, Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, Navy Expeditionary Medal, Service stars are also authorized for the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal effective February 9,2015 retroactive to September,11,2001. Each star represents a deployment in support of an approved GWOT operation, only one GWOT-EM is awarded for each operation. The five GWOT-EM approved operations by inclusive dates are, Enduring Freedom,11,2001 - TBD Iraqi Freedom, Mar.19,2003 - Aug.31, 2010Nomad Shadow, Nov.05,2007 - TBD New Dawn, Sep. 01,2010 - Dec.31,2011 Inherent Resolve, the bronze service star is also authorized for certain unit awards such as the Presidential Unit Citation to denote a second and subsequent award. The service ribbon itself indicates the first award, with a service star being added to indicate the second. If ever applicable, a service star is worn instead of five bronze stars. As a result, at least one star will be worn on the ribbon. However, though authorized for wear, no battle stars have been approved for wear, only a combatant commander can initiate a request for a battle star. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the approving authority, only one award of the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal and one award of the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal may be authorized for any individual. The specific manner of wear and symbolism of the stars varied from medal to medal, for example, an American Campaign Medal with a bronze service star indicated the service member had participated in an antisubmarine campaign. On other medals, bronze service stars were used on the service ribbon for those recipients of medals in possession of authorized campaign claps for those medals. Similarly, during the Vietnam War and afterwards, the Battle Effectiveness Award took the place of receiving battle stars for superior battle efficiency in place of combat operations. Awards and decorations of the United States military United States military award devices 5/16 inch star Oak leaf cluster United States award regulations for World War II

6.
Cargo ship
–
A cargo ship or freighter is any sort of ship or vessel that carries cargo, goods, and materials from one port to another. Thousands of cargo carriers ply the worlds seas and oceans each year, cargo ships are usually specially designed for the task, often being equipped with cranes and other mechanisms to load and unload, and come in all sizes. Today, they are almost always built by welded steel, cargo ships/freighters can be divided into five groups, according to the type of cargo they carry. Tankers carry petroleum products or other liquid cargo, dry bulk carriers carry coal, grain, ore and other similar products in loose form. Multi-purpose vessels, as the name suggests, carry different classes of cargo – e. g. liquid, a Reefer ship is specifically designed and used for shipping perishable commodities which require temperature-controlled, mostly fruits, meat, fish, vegetables, dairy products and other foodstuffs. Specialized types of cargo vessels include ships and bulk carriers. Cargo ships fall into two categories that reflect the services they offer to industry, liner and tramp services. Those on a published schedule and fixed tariff rates are cargo liners. Tramp ships do not have fixed schedules, users charter them to haul loads. Generally, the shipping companies and private individuals operate tramp ships. Cargo liners run on fixed schedules published by the shipping companies, each trip a liner takes is called a voyage. However, some cargo liners may carry passengers also, a cargo liner that carries 12 or more passengers is called a combination or passenger-cum-cargo line. The desire to trade routes over longer distances, and throughout more seasons of the year. Before the middle of the 19th century, the incidence of piracy resulted in most cargo ships being armed, sometimes heavily, as in the case of the Manila galleons. They were also escorted by warships. Piracy is still common in some waters, particularly in the Malacca Straits. In 2004, the governments of three nations agreed to provide better protection for the ships passing through the Straits. The waters off Somalia and Nigeria are also prone to piracy, while smaller vessels are also in danger along parts of the South American, Southeast Asian coasts, the words cargo and freight have become interchangeable in casual usage

7.
Horsepower
–
Horsepower is a unit of measurement of power. There are many different standards and types of horsepower, two common definitions being used today are the mechanical horsepower, which is approximately 746 watts, and the metric horsepower, which is approximately 735.5 watts. The term was adopted in the late 18th century by Scottish engineer James Watt to compare the output of engines with the power of draft horses. It was later expanded to include the power of other types of piston engines, as well as turbines, electric motors. The definition of the unit varied among geographical regions, most countries now use the SI unit watt for measurement of power. With the implementation of the EU Directive 80/181/EEC on January 1,2010, units called horsepower have differing definitions, The mechanical horsepower, also known as imperial horsepower equals approximately 745.7 watts. It was defined originally as exactly 550 foot-pounds per second [745.7 N. m/s), the metric horsepower equals approximately 735.5 watts. It was defined originally as 75 kgf-m per second is approximately equivalent to 735.5 watts, the Pferdestärke PS is a name for a group of similar power measurements used in Germany around the end of the 19th century, all of about one metric horsepower in size. The boiler horsepower equals 9809.5 watts and it was used for rating steam boilers and is equivalent to 34.5 pounds of water evaporated per hour at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. One horsepower for rating electric motors is equal to 746 watts, one horsepower for rating Continental European electric motors is equal to 735 watts. Continental European electric motors used to have dual ratings, one British Royal Automobile Club horsepower can equal a range of values based on estimates of several engine dimensions. It is one of the tax horsepower systems adopted around Europe, the development of the steam engine provided a reason to compare the output of horses with that of the engines that could replace them. He had previously agreed to take royalties of one third of the savings in coal from the older Newcomen steam engines and this royalty scheme did not work with customers who did not have existing steam engines but used horses instead. Watt determined that a horse could turn a mill wheel 144 times in an hour, the wheel was 12 feet in radius, therefore, the horse travelled 2.4 × 2π ×12 feet in one minute. Watt judged that the horse could pull with a force of 180 pounds-force. So, P = W t = F d t =180 l b f ×2.4 ×2 π ×12 f t 1 m i n =32,572 f t ⋅ l b f m i n. Watt defined and calculated the horsepower as 32,572 ft·lbf/min, Watt determined that a pony could lift an average 220 lbf 100 ft per minute over a four-hour working shift. Watt then judged a horse was 50% more powerful than a pony, engineering in History recounts that John Smeaton initially estimated that a horse could produce 22,916 foot-pounds per minute

8.
Drive shaft
–
As torque carriers, drive shafts are subject to torsion and shear stress, equivalent to the difference between the input torque and the load. They must therefore be enough to bear the stress, whilst avoiding too much additional weight as that would in turn increase their inertia. The term drive shaft first appeared during the mid 19th century, in Stovers 1861 patent reissue for a planing and matching machine, the term is used to refer to the belt-driven shaft by which the machine is driven. The term is not used in his original patent, another early use of the term occurs in the 1861 patent reissue for the Watkins and Bryson horse-drawn mowing machine. Here, the term refers to the transmitting power from the machines wheels to the gear train that works the cutting mechanism. In the 1890s, the term began to be used in a closer to the modern sense. In 1899, Bukey used the term to describe the shaft transmitting power from the wheel to the machinery by a universal joint in his Horse-Power. In the same year, Clark described his Marine Velocipede using the term to refer to the shaft transmitting power through a universal joint to the propeller shaft. Crompton used the term to refer to the shaft between the transmission of his steam-powered Motor Vehicle of 1903 and the driven axle, an automobile may use a longitudinal shaft to deliver power from an engine/transmission to the other end of the vehicle before it goes to the wheels. A pair of short drive shafts is commonly used to power from a central differential, transmission. In front-engined, rear-drive vehicles, a drive shaft is also required to send power the length of the vehicle. Two forms dominate, The torque tube with a universal joint. This system became known as Système Panhard after the automobile company Panhard et Levassor patented it, most of these vehicles have a clutch and gearbox mounted directly on the engine, with a drive shaft leading to a final drive in the rear axle. When the vehicle is stationary, the drive shaft does not rotate, some vehicles, seeking improved weight balance between front and rear, use a rear-mounted transaxle. This places the clutch and transmission at the rear of the car, in this case the drive shaft rotates continuously with the engine, even when the car is stationary and out of gear. A drive shaft connecting a rear differential to a wheel may be called a half-shaft. The name derives from the fact that two such shafts are required to one rear axle. Early automobiles often used chain drive or belt drive mechanisms rather than a drive shaft, some used electrical generators and motors to transmit power to the wheels

9.
Knot (unit)
–
The knot is a unit of speed equal to one nautical mile per hour, approximately 1.151 mph. The ISO Standard symbol for the knot is kn, the same symbol is preferred by the IEEE, kt is also common. The knot is a unit that is accepted for use with the SI. Etymologically, the term derives from counting the number of knots in the line that unspooled from the reel of a log in a specific time. 1 international knot =1 nautical mile per hour,1.852 kilometres per hour,0.514 metres per second,1.151 miles per hour,20.254 inches per second,1852 m is the length of the internationally agreed nautical mile. The US adopted the definition in 1954, having previously used the US nautical mile. The UK adopted the international nautical mile definition in 1970, having used the UK Admiralty nautical mile. The speeds of vessels relative to the fluids in which they travel are measured in knots, for consistency, the speeds of navigational fluids are also measured in knots. Thus, speed over the ground and rate of progress towards a distant point are given in knots. Until the mid-19th century, vessel speed at sea was measured using a chip log, the chip log was cast over the stern of the moving vessel and the line allowed to pay out. Knots placed at a distance of 8 fathoms -47 feet 3 inches from each other, passed through a sailors fingers, the knot count would be reported and used in the sailing masters dead reckoning and navigation. This method gives a value for the knot of 20.25 in/s, the difference from the modern definition is less than 0. 02%. On a chart of the North Atlantic, the scale varies by a factor of two from Florida to Greenland, a single graphic scale, of the sort on many maps, would therefore be useless on such a chart. Recent British Admiralty charts have a latitude scale down the middle to make this even easier, speed is sometimes incorrectly expressed as knots per hour, which is in fact a measure of acceleration. Prior to 1969, airworthiness standards for aircraft in the United States Federal Aviation Regulations specified that distances were to be in statute miles. In 1969, these standards were amended to specify that distances were to be in nautical miles. At 11000 m, an airspeed of 300 kn may correspond to a true airspeed of 500 kn in standard conditions. Beaufort scale Hull speed, which deals with theoretical estimates of maximum speed of displacement hulls Knot count Knotted cord Metre per second Orders of magnitude Rope Kemp

10.
5"/38 caliber gun
–
The Mark 12 5/38 caliber gun was a US naval gun. The gun was installed into Single Purpose and Dual Purpose mounts used primarily by the US Navy, the 38 caliber barrel was a mid-length compromise between the previous United States standard 5/51 low-angle gun and 5/25 anti-aircraft gun. The increased barrel length provided greatly improved performance in both anti-aircraft and anti-surface roles compared to the 5/25 gun, however, except for the barrel length and the use of semi-fixed ammunition, the 5/38 gun was derived from the 5/25 gun. Both weapons had power ramming, which enabled rapid fire at high angles against aircraft, the 5/38 entered service on USS Farragut, commissioned in 1934. The base ring mount, which improved the rate of fire, entered service on USS Gridley. Even this advanced system required nearly 100 rounds of ammunition expenditure per aircraft kill, however, the planes were normally killed by shell fragments and not direct hits, barrage fire was used, with many guns firing in the air at the same time. Base ring mounts with integral hoists had a rate of fire of 15 rounds per minute per barrel, however. On pedestal and other mounts lacking integral hoists,12 to 15 rounds per minute was the rate of fire, useful life expectancy was 4600 effective full charges per barrel. The 5/38 cal gun was mounted on a large number of US Navy ships in the World War II era. It was backfitted to many of the World War I-era battleships during their wartime refits and it has left active US Navy service, but it is still on mothballed ships of the United States Navy reserve fleets. It is also used by a number of nations who bought or were given US Navy surplus ships, each mount carries one or two Mk 12 5/38cal Gun Assemblies. The gun assembly shown is used in single mounts, and it is the gun in twin mounts. It is loaded from the left side, the left gun in twin mounts is the mirror image of the right gun, and it is loaded from the right side. The Mk12 gun assembly weighs 3,990 lb, the major Mk12 Gun Assembly characteristics are,158 Semi-automatic During recoil, some of the recoil energy is stored in the counter-recoil system. That stored energy is used during counter-recoil to prepare the gun for the next round, the firing pin is cocked, the breech is opened, the spent powder case is ejected, and the bore is air cleaned. Hand loaded A Projectile-Man and a Powder-Man are stationed at each gun assembly and their job is to move the round, consisting of a projectile and a powder case, from the hoists to the rammer tray, and then start the ram cycle. The hydraulically driven Rammer Spade, called the Power Spade in that picture, is at the back of the Rammer Tray, if the multiple names of the Spade is confusing, look at this footnote. Vertical sliding-wedge breech block The breech block closes the chamber behind the powder case and it also holds the firing pin assembly

11.
3"/50 caliber gun
–
For Army 3-inch gun see 3-inch M1918 gun The 3″/50 caliber gun in United States naval gun terminology indicates the gun fired a projectile 3 inches in diameter, and the barrel was 50 calibers long. Different guns of this caliber were used by the U. S. Navy and U. S. Coast Guard from 1890 through the 1990s on a variety of combatant and transport ship classes. The US Navys first 3″/50 caliber gun was a model with a projectile velocity of 2,100 feet per second. Low-angle mountings for this gun had a range of 7000 yards at the elevation of 15 degrees. The gun entered service around 1900 with the Bainbridge-class destroyers, and was fitted to Connecticut-class battleships. By World War II these guns were only on a few Coast Guard cutters. These guns fired the same 2,700 feet per second used by the following dual-purpose Marks. These were built-up guns with a tube, partial-length jacket, hoop, dual-purpose 3″/50 caliber guns first entered service in 1915 as a refit to USS Texas, and were subsequently mounted on many types of ships as the need for anti-aircraft protection was recognized. They also replaced the original low-angle 4/50 caliber guns on flush-deck Wickes and these dual-purpose guns were quick-firing, meaning that they used fixed ammunition, with powder case and projectile permanently attached, and handled as a single unit weighing 34 pounds. Maximum range was 14,600 yards at 45 degrees elevation, useful life expectancy was 4300 effective full charges per barrel. The 3/50 caliber gun Marks 17 and 18 was first used as a deck gun on R-class submarines launched in 1918-1919. At the time it was an improvement on the earlier 3/23 caliber gun, after using larger guns on many other submarines, the 3/50 caliber gun Mark 21 was specified as the standard deck gun on the Porpoise- through Gato-class submarines launched in 1935-1942. The small gun was chosen to remove the temptation to engage enemy vessels on the surface. The gun was mounted aft of the conning tower to reduce submerged drag. Wartime experience showed that larger guns were needed and this need was initially met by transferring 4/50 caliber guns from S-class submarines as they were shifted from combat to training roles from late 1942. Later, the 5/25 caliber gun, initially removed from battleships sunk or damaged in the attack on Pearl Harbor and later manufactured in a submarine version, post-war experimentation with an extended range variant was abandoned as shipboard surface-to-air missiles were developed. The United States Navy considered contemporary 5/38 caliber guns and 5″/54 caliber guns more effective against surface targets, the 3″/50 caliber gun was a semiautomatic anti-aircraft weapon with a power driven automatic loader. These monobloc 3″ guns were fitted to both single and twin mountings, the single was to be exchanged for a twin 40 mm antiaircraft gun mount and the twin for a quadruple 40 mm mount

12.
Oerlikon 20 mm cannon
–
The Oerlikon 20 mm cannon is a series of autocannons, based on an original German 20 mm Becker design that appeared very early in World War I. It was widely produced by Oerlikon Contraves and others, with various models employed by both Allied and Axis forces during World War II, and many still in use today. During World War I, the German Reinhold Becker developed a 20 mm caliber cannon and this used a 20x70 RB cartridge and had a cyclic rate of fire of 300 rpm. It was used on a scale as an aircraft gun on Luftstreitkräfte warplanes. Because the Treaty of Versailles banned further production of weapons in Germany. SEMAG continued development of the weapon, and in 1924 had produced the SEMAG L, the Oerlikon firm, named after the Zürich suburb where it was based, then acquired all rights to the weapon, plus the manufacturing equipment and the employees of SEMAG. In 1927 the Oerlikon S was added to the product line. This fired a larger cartridge to achieve a muzzle velocity of 830 m/s, at the cost of increased weight. The purpose of development was to improve the performance of the gun as an anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapon. An improved version known as the 1S followed in 1930, three sizes of gun with their different ammunition and barrel length, but very similar mechanisms, continued to be developed in parallel. In 1930 Oerlikon reconsidered the application of its gun in aircraft and introduced the AF and AL, designed to be used in flexible mounts, the 15-round box magazine used by earlier versions of the gun was replaced by drum magazine holding 15 or 30 rounds. In 1935 it made an important step by introducing a series of guns designed to be mounted in or on the wings of fighter aircraft, designated with FF for Flügelfest meaning wing-mounted, these weapons were again available in the three sizes, with designations FF, FFL and FFS. The FF fired a larger cartridge than the AF, 20x72RB. The FF weighed 24 kg and achieved a velocity of 550 to 600 m/s with a rate of fire of 520 rpm. The FFL of 30 kg fired a projectile at a velocity of 675 m/s with a rate of fire of 500 rpm. And the FFS, which weighed 39 kg, delivered a high velocity of 830 m/s at a rate of fire of 470 rpm. Apart from changes to the design of the guns for wing-mounting and remote control, for the FF series drum sizes of 45,60,75 and 100 rounds were available, but most users chose the 60-round drum. The 1930s were a period of global re-armament, and a number of foreign firms took licenses for the Oerlikon family of aircraft cannon

13.
Victory ship
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The Victory ship was a class of cargo ship produced in large numbers by North American shipyards during World War II to replace losses caused by German submarines. A total of 531 Victory ships were built, one of the first acts of the United States War Shipping Administration upon its formation in February 1942 was to commission the design of what came to be known as the Victory class. The design was an enhancement of the Liberty ship, which had successfully produced in extraordinary numbers. Victory ships were larger than Liberty ships,14 feet longer at 455 feet,6 feet wider at 62 ft. Displacement was up just under 1,000 tons, to 15,200, with a raised forecastle and a more sophisticated hull shape to help achieve the higher speed, they had a quite different appearance from Liberty ships. To make them vulnerable to U-boat attacks, Victory ships made 15 to 17 knots,4 to 6 knots faster than the Libertys. The extra speed was achieved through more modern, efficient engines, most used steam turbines, which had been in short supply earlier in the war and reserved for warships. All were oil-fired, but for a handful of Canadian vessels completed with both coal bunkers and oil tanks, another improvement was electrically powered auxiliary equipment, rather than steam-driven machinery. To prevent the hull fractures that a few Liberty ships developed and these were manned by United States Navy Armed Guard personnel. The VC2-S-AP5 Haskell-class attack transports were armed with the 5-inch stern gun, one quad 40 mm Bofors cannon, four dual 40 mm Bofors cannon, the Haskells were operated and crewed exclusively by U. S. Navy personnel. The Victory ship was noted for good proportion of cubic between holds for a ship of its day. A Victory ships cargo hold one, two and five hatches are a single rigged with a capacity of 70,400,76,700, and 69,500 bale cubic feet respectively. Victory ships hold three and four hatches are double rigged with a capacity of 136,100 and 100,300 bale cubic feet respectively. Victory ship have built in mast, booms and derrick cranes, the first vessel was SS United Victory launched at Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation on 12 January 1944 and completed on 28 February 1944, making her maiden voyage a month later. American vessels frequently had a name incorporating the word Victory, the British and Canadians used Fort and Park respectively. Although initial deliveries were slow—only 15 had been delivered by May 1944—by the end of the war 531 had been constructed, because the Atlantic battle had been won by the time that the first of the Victory ships appeared none were sunk by U-boats. Three were sunk by Japanese kamikaze attack in April of 1945, many Victory ships were converted to troopship to bring US soldiers home at the end of World War II as part of Operation Magic Carpet. A total of 97 Victory ships were converted to carry up to 1,600 soldiers

14.
Emergency Shipbuilding program
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The Emergency Shipbuilding Program was a United States government effort to quickly build simple cargo ships to carry troops and material to allies and foreign theatres during World War II. Run by the U. S. Maritime Commission, the program built almost 6,000 ships, by the fall of 1940, the British Merchant Navy was being sunk in the Battle of the Atlantic by Germanys U-Boats faster than the United Kingdom could replace them. Led by Sir Arthur Salter, a group of men called the British Merchant Shipping Mission came to North America from the UK to enlist U. S. and Canadian shipbuilders to construct merchant ships. As all existing U. S. shipyards capable to constructing ocean-going merchant ships were occupied by either work of building ships for the U. S. Navy or for the U. S. S. Ship repairer Todd Shipyards which had its headquarters in New York City in league with the shipbuilder Bath Iron Works located in Bath and that yard was to be called the Todd-California Shipbuilding Corp. It was slated to be built on the flats of Richmond on the east side of the Bay. Kaiser, who headed the Kaiser Companies, and John A. McCone, contracts for both yards and the ships was signed on December 20,1940. The first of these vessels, the SS Ocean Vanguard was launched at the Todd-California yard on October 15,1941, immediately the Commission authorized that the two yards building for the British build ships for the U. S. upon completion of their current contracts. S. In this first wave of seven additional yards were added to those in Maine and California. One of the new yards planned for construction was to be in Baltimore and that facility became known as the Bethlehem-Fairfield shipyard for the Fairfield section of Baltimore where it was located. On the West Coast it had yards in San Pedro and San Francisco and that yard was to be called the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company. On the West Coast, one yard was contracted to be built in Los Angeles at Terminal Island and that yard would be called the California Shipbuilding Corporation or CalShip for short. The Kaiser Corporation itself received a contract to build a new yard on the Columbia River at Portland, in 1941, the manufacturers of steam turbines in the U. S. With that, the Liberty ship was adopted as the emergency type to be built. As 1941 progressed, the construction of the emergency yards accelerated rapidly, the ships ordered this second wave included 112 emergency type, the remainder were standard type vessels and tankers. After this time the original Kaiser yard became known as Richmond #1, after the May 27 Declaration of Unlimited National Emergency by the President, the Emergency Program was further expanded in a third wave. To accommodate the addition of ships to be built, additional ways were added to the yards in the program. In total this increase raised the output of all merchant shipbuilders to approximately 500 ships for 1942 and 700 ships in 1943

15.
U.S. Army
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The United States Army is the largest branch of the United States Armed Forces and performs land-based military operations. After the Revolutionary War, the Congress of the Confederation created the United States Army on 3 June 1784, the United States Army considers itself descended from the Continental Army, and dates its institutional inception from the origin of that armed force in 1775. As a uniformed service, the Army is part of the Department of the Army. As a branch of the forces, the mission of the U. S. The branch participates in conflicts worldwide and is the major ground-based offensive and defensive force of the United States, the United States Army serves as the land-based branch of the U. S. Section 3062 of Title 10, U. S, the army was initially led by men who had served in the British Army or colonial militias and who brought much of British military heritage with them. As the Revolutionary War progressed, French aid, resources, a number of European soldiers came on their own to help, such as Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, who taught Prussian Army tactics and organizational skills. The army fought numerous pitched battles and in the South in 1780–81 sometimes used the Fabian strategy and hit-and-run tactics, hitting where the British were weakest, to wear down their forces. Washington led victories against the British at Trenton and Princeton, but lost a series of battles in the New York and New Jersey campaign in 1776, with a decisive victory at Yorktown, and the help of the French, the Continental Army prevailed against the British. After the war, though, the Continental Army was quickly given land certificates, State militias became the new nations sole ground army, with the exception of a regiment to guard the Western Frontier and one battery of artillery guarding West Points arsenal. However, because of continuing conflict with Native Americans, it was realized that it was necessary to field a trained standing army. The War of 1812, the second and last war between the United States and Great Britain, had mixed results. After taking control of Lake Erie in 1813, the U. S. Army seized parts of western Upper Canada, burned York and defeated Tecumseh, which caused his Western Confederacy to collapse. Following U. S. victories in the Canadian province of Upper Canada, British troops, were able to capture and burn Washington, which was defended by militia, in 1814. Two weeks after a treaty was signed, Andrew Jackson defeated the British in the Battle of New Orleans and Siege of Fort St. Philip, U. S. troops and sailors captured HMS Cyane, Levant, and Penguin in the final engagements of the war. Per the treaty, both sides, the United States and Great Britain, returned to the status quo. Both navies kept the warships they had seized during the conflict, the armys major campaign against the Indians was fought in Florida against Seminoles. It took long wars to defeat the Seminoles and move them to Oklahoma

16.
U.S. Maritime Commission
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It also formed the United States Maritime Service for the training of seagoing ships officers to man the new fleet. The purpose of the Maritime Commission was multifold as described in the Merchant Marine Acts Declaration of Policy. S, Merchant Marine prior to the Act. Another function given to the Commission involved the formation of the U. S. Maritime Service for the training of seagoing ships officers to man the new fleet, the actual licensing of officers and seamen still resided with the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation. President Roosevelt nominated Joseph P. Kennedy first head of the Commission, Kennedy held that position until February 1938 when he left to become US Ambassador to Great Britain. The other four members of the Commission in the years before the beginning of World War II were a mix of retired officers and men from disciplines of law. The man most notable in the group Land brought to the Commission was Commander Howard L. Vickery, USN, as a symbol of the rebirth of the U. S. Upon the U. S. entry into World War II, America was requisitioned by the U. S. Navy and became USS West Point. Most of the C2s and C3s were converted to Navy auxiliaries, notably attack cargo ships, attack transports, the Commission also was tasked with the construction of many hundred military type vessels such as Landing Ship, Tank s and Tacoma-class frigates and large troop transports. By the end of the war, U. S. shipyards working under Maritime Commission contracts had built a total of 5,777 oceangoing merchant, in early 1942 both the training and licensing was transferred to the U. S. S. With the end of World War II, both the Emergency and Long Range shipbuilding programs were terminated as there were far too many merchant vessels now for the Nations peacetime needs. In 1946, the Merchant Ship Sales Act was passed to sell off a portion of the ships previously built during the war to commercial buyers. Although not sold outright to nations that were enemies during the war, for the next 25 years, in ports all around the world one could find dozens of ships which had been built during the war but which now were used in peace. Ships not disposed of through the Ship Sales Act were placed one of eight National Defense Reserve Fleet sites maintained on the Atlantic, Pacific. On several occasions in the postwar years ships in the fleets were activated for both military and humanitarian aid missions. The last major mobilization of the NDRF came during the Vietnam War, since then, a smaller fleet of ships called the Ready Reserve Force has been mobilized to support both humanitarian and military missions. The Maritime Commission was abolished on 24 May 1950, and its functions were divided between the U. S. S. Merchant Marine Academy which had built and opened during World War II. 1936, Merchant Marine Act abolishes Shipping Board and establishes Maritime Commission,1937, Joseph P. S. merchant shipping has been held by many agencies since 1917

17.
War Shipping Administration
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The War Shipping Administration was a World War II emergency war agency of the US government, tasked to purchase and operate the civilian shipping tonnage the US needed for fighting the war. Both shipbuilding under the Maritime Commission and ship allocation under the WSA to Army, land who continued as head of the Maritime Commission while also heading the WSA. A shortage of vessels further complicated by requirements to take out of service for conversion and armament was of concern at the highest levels. Harry Hopkins reporting directly to the President, differences between the organizations and lack of decisive authority short of the President limited the boards effectiveness. Upon establishment of the WSA the Strategic Shipping Board continued in existence in a diminished role under the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On February 7,1942, the WSA was established by President Franklin Delano Roosevelts Executive Order No.9054, February 7,1942 as the U. S. had entered the war. The WSA was administratively split off from the United States Maritime Commission, established in 1936 and those included the production of Liberty ships and Victory ships among other types. The U. S. fleet expanded to some 3,500 dry cargo vessels, on a practical level The Maritime Commission and the WSA worked closely together under the administration of Vice Admiral Emory S. Land at the head of each and it became apparent immediately when this Nation entered the war that a special agency to deal with the operational problems peculiar to war was necessary to supplement the Maritime Commission. Thus WSA became the Governments ship operating agency and the Maritime Commission its shipbuilding agency, under that authority cargo hulls were allocated to either commerce, Army or Navy. Many of the Armys ships and Naval transports were allocated by WSA, WSA, through its agents, directly operated ships in support of the services and civilian requirements. After the war, WSA vessels were used to home the huge number of armed personnel overseas, as part of Operation Magic Carpet. Over 3,500,000 men were brought home from overseas areas by December 1,1945, on September 1,1946, the WSA functions were returned to the Maritime Commission. Combined Shipping Adjustment Board United States Merchant Marine Victory ship Ships for Victory, A History of Shipbuilding under the U. S. Maritime Commission in World War II, ISBN 0-8018-6752-5 LCCN2001018657 United States Government Manual,1945 War Shipping Administration section American Merchant Marine at War

18.
National Defense Reserve Fleet
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The NDRF is managed by the U. S. Department of Transportations Maritime Administration. It is a different entity from the United States Navy reserve fleets, NDRF vessels are at the fleet sites at James River, Virginia–the James River Reserve Fleet, Beaumont, Texas–the Beaumont Reserve Fleet, and Suisun Bay, California, and at designated outported berths. Former anchorage sites included Stony Point, New York - the Hudson River Reserve Fleet, Wilmington, North Carolina, Mobile, Alabama, Astoria, Oregon, and Olympia, Washington. Through the 2010s, the oldest, most decrepit hulls at Suisun Bay will be stripped of materials, then broken up in Texas. Twenty of the most polluting mothball ships are slated for recycling by 2012, at its peak in 1950, the NDRF had 2,277 ships in lay-up. In July 2007, it held 230 ships, primarily dry cargo ships with some tankers, military auxiliaries, by the end of August,2015, it held 100. The NDRF was established under Section 11 of the Merchant Ship Sales Act of 1946 to serve as a reserve of ships for national defense, NDRF vessels were used in seven wars and crises. During the Korean War,540 vessels were out to move military forces. During a worldwide tonnage shortfall in 1951–53, more than 600 ships were reactivated to carry coal to Northern Europe, from 1955 through 1964, another 600 ships were used to store grain for the Department of Agriculture. Another 223 cargo ships and 29 tankers were activated during a tonnage shortfall after the Suez Canal was closed in 1956, during the Berlin crisis of 1961,18 vessels were activated and remained in service until 1970. Another 172 vessels were activated for the Vietnam War and these are crewed with a reduced crew but kept available for activation within four, five, ten or twenty days. An additional 28 ships are held under United States Maritime Administration custody for other Government agencies on a cost-reimbursable basis. Vessels with military utility or logistic value are held in status and are in a preservation program that is designed to keep them in the same condition as when they enter the fleet. The internal spaces are dehumidified to slow the corrosion of metal, DC power is distributed through anodes to the exterior underwater portions of the hull, creating an electric field that suppresses corrosion and preserves the surface of the hull. External painting and other work is generally deferred since it does not affect the ability to activate and operate the vessel. MARAD is authorized as the government’s disposal agent through the NDRF program for merchant type vessels equal to or greater than 1,500 gross tons. A state agency can file an application to request title to a vessel as-is where-is from the NDRF for the purpose of creating an artificial reef, of the 132 non-retention vessels in the NDRF, there are 117 that are being prepared for disposal. The NDRF program can give and lend historic artifacts to maritime-heritage organizations, battleships, cruisers, and aircraft carriers which have been stricken or those awaiting final disposition may be transferred to MARAD locations for berthing

19.
James River
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The James River is a river in the U. S. state of Virginia. It is 348 miles long, extending to 444 miles if one includes the Jackson River, the James River drains a catchment comprising 10,432 square miles. The watershed includes about 4% open water and an area with a population of 2.5 million people and it is the 12th longest river in the United States that remains entirely within a single state. Tidal waters extend west to Richmond, the capital of Virginia, larger tributaries draining to the tidal portion include the Appomattox River, Chickahominy River, Warwick River, Pagan River, and the Nansemond River. At its mouth near Newport News Point, the Elizabeth River, many boats pass through this river to import and export Virginia products. The navigable portion of the river was the highway of the Colony of Virginia during its first 15 years, facilitating supply ships delivering supplies. However, for the first five years, despite many hopes of gold and riches, in 1612, businessman John Rolfe successfully cultivated a non-native strain of tobacco which proved popular in England. Soon, the became the primary means of exporting the large hogsheads of this cash crop from an ever-growing number of plantations with wharfs along its banks. This development made the efforts of the Virginia Company of London successful financially, spurring even more development, investments. The upper reaches of the river above the head of navigation at the line were explored by fur trading parties sent by Abraham Wood during the late 17th century. Although ocean-going ships were unable to navigate beyond present-day Richmond, portage of products, produce from the Piedmont and Great Valley regions traveled down the river to seaports at Richmond and Manchester through such port towns as Lynchburg, Scottsville, Columbia and Buchanan. The James River was considered as a route for transport of produce from the Ohio Valley, the James River and Kanawha Canal was built for this purpose, to provide a navigable portion of the Kanawha River, a tributary of the Ohio River. For the most mountainous section between the two points, the James River and Kanawha Turnpike was built to provide a link via wagons. However, before the canal could be completed, in the mid-19th century, railroads emerged as a more practical technology. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway was completed between Richmond and the Ohio River at the new city of Huntington, West Virginia by 1873, dooming the canals economic prospects. In the 1880s, the Richmond and Alleghany Railroad was laid along the portion of the canals towpath. In modern times, this line is used primarily in transporting West Virginia coal to export coal piers at Newport News. The James River contains numerous parks and other recreational attractions, canoeing, fishing, kayaking, hiking, and swimming are some of the activities that people enjoy along the river during the summer

20.
Reserve Fleet
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A reserve fleet is a collection of naval vessels of all types that are fully equipped for service but are not currently needed, and thus partially or fully decommissioned. A reserve fleet is said to be in mothballs or mothballed. In earlier times, and especially in British usage, these ships were said to be laid up in ordinary and they may be modified, for instance by having rust-prone areas sealed off or wrapped in plastic or, in the case of sailing warships, the masts removed. While being held in the fleet, ships typically have a minimal crew to ensure that they stay in somewhat usable condition. If for nothing else, their bilge pumps need to be run regularly to reduce corrosion of their steel, the British Reserve Fleet was a repository for British decommissioned warships from c.1800 until c. The United States National Defense Reserve Fleet, consists of about fifty World War II ships that have been moored in Suisun Bay near San Francisco since the 1950s or 60s, the fleet includes military troopships and tankers. In practice most reserve ships rapidly become obsolete and are scrapped, or used for experiments or target practice, or are sold to other nations, exporting the vessels for shipbreaking or dismantling are alternatives to reserve fleets. More recently, the U. S. Navy has established a program to allow ships, such as Oriskany, to be sunk in selected locations to create artificial reefs. Recycling is another option, as in the case of the United States National Defense Reserve Fleet, the ships of which are set to be stripped of their paint, cut into pieces, the practice of exporting and dismantling ships has caused international protests as they contain toxic materials. In 2007, following studies that found that 20 tons of lead paint had flaked off the ships of the NDRF, environmentalist groups sued to have them removed. The federal Maritime Administration has agreed to more than 50 of the ships as a result,25 of which has been removed by 2012. Aircraft boneyard National Defense Reserve Fleet Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet United States Navy reserve fleets Daniel Madsen

21.
Army Transportation Service
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The United States Army Transport Service operated Army transport ships for both troop transport and cargo service between United States ports and overseas posts. ATS operated the Armys large ships but did not operate smaller vessels of the boat service. From that time until absorbed into the United States Army Transportation Corps to operate under its Water Division the service operated the United States Army Transports. Except during World War I, when the Armys large transports were turned over to the Naval Overseas Transportation Service, ATS itself became the Water Division of the Transportation Corps but the Army Transport Service name continued to be applied to the large ship branch of that division. The vessels themselves were commanded by merchant mariners with a civilian crew. On smaller vessels or cargo ships a single officer would represent the Corps, the ships were not armed except during World War II when naval type guns were installed and manned by Naval Armed Guard gun crews. Naval personnel, either Armed Guard or communications were under their own independent of ships master or Corps representatives in tactical matters. With the Army at Hoboken Army Quartermaster Corps—Army Transport Service Army - Transportation Service

22.
Military Sea Transportation Service
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The Military Sealift Command is a United States Navy organization that controls the replenishment and military transport ships of the Navy. The United States Military Sealift Command has the responsibility for providing sealift and it first came into existence on 9 July 1949 when the Military Sea Transportation Service became solely responsible for the Department of Defenses ocean transport needs. The MSTS was renamed the Military Sealift Command in 1970, Military Sealift Command ships are made up of a core fleet of ships owned by the United States Navy and others under long-term-charter augmented by short-term or voyage-chartered ships. Some ships may have Navy or Marine Corps personnel on board to carry out communication and special mission functions, ships on charter or equivalent, retain commercial colors and bear the standard merchant prefix MV, SS, or GTS, without hull numbers. Five programs comprise Military Sealift Command, Combat Logistics Force, Special Mission, Prepositioning, Service Support, the Combat Logistics Force’s role is to directly replenish ships that are underway at sea, enabling them to deploy for long periods of time without having to come to port. The Special Mission program operates vessels for military and federal government tasks, such as submarine support and missile flight data collection. The Prepositioning program sustains the US militarys forward presence strategy by deploying supply ships in key areas prior to actual need, also, MSC realigned two of its four mission-driven programs and adding a fifth program. The Prepositioning and Sealift programs are unchanged by the 2012 reorganization, as of June 2013, Military Sealift Command operated around 110 ships, and employed 9,800 people. The Combat Logistics Force is the part of the MSC most associated with supporting the Navy. In 1972, a study concluded that it would be cheaper for civilians to man USN support vessels such as tankers, the CLF is the American equivalent of the British Royal Fleet Auxiliary. These MSC ships are painted gray and can be easily identified by the blue. The Combat Logistics Force was formerly called the Naval Fleet Auxiliary Force, some of its ships were transferred to the new Service Support program. Special mission ships work for several different US Navy customers, including the Naval Sea Systems Command and these ships like those of the NFAF are painted haze gray with blue and gold stack bands. Some of its ships were transferred to the new Service Support program, as a key element of sea basing, afloat prepositioning provides the military equipment and supplies for a contingency forward deployed in key ocean areas before need. The MSC Prepositioning Program supports the US Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, Prepositioning ships remain at sea, ready to deploy on short-notice the vital equipment, fuel and supplies to initially support military forces in the event of a contingency. The Prepositioning Program consists of 34 at-sea ships plus 2 aviation support ships kept in reduced operating status and these ships wear civilian livery, and are only designated USNS if government-owned, those chartered from civilian owners are either SS or MV. It consists of four government-operated ships formerly in the Special Mission program, Sealift is divided into three separate project offices, Tanker Project Office, Dry Cargo Project Office and the Surge Project Office. As a result of a 2012 organization, MSCs 12 worldwide MSC ship support units will now report to the MSC operational area commands in their areas of responsibility

23.
West Germany
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West Germany is the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation on 23 May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990. During this Cold War era, NATO-aligned West Germany and Warsaw Pact-aligned East Germany were divided by the Inner German border, after 1961 West Berlin was physically separated from East Berlin as well as from East Germany by the Berlin Wall. This situation ended when East Germany was dissolved and its five states joined the ten states of the Federal Republic of Germany along with the reunified city-state of Berlin. With the reunification of West and East Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany, enlarged now to sixteen states and this period is referred to as the Bonn Republic by historians, alluding to the interwar Weimar Republic and the post-reunification Berlin Republic. The Federal Republic of Germany was established from eleven states formed in the three Allied Zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom and France, US and British forces remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Its population grew from roughly 51 million in 1950 to more than 63 million in 1990, the city of Bonn was its de facto capital city. The fourth Allied occupation zone was held by the Soviet Union, as a result, West Germany had a territory about half the size of the interbellum democratic Weimar Republic. At the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided among the Western and Eastern blocs, Germany was de facto divided into two countries and two special territories, the Saarland and divided Berlin. The Federal Republic of Germany claimed a mandate for all of Germany. It took the line that the GDR was an illegally constituted puppet state, though the GDR did hold regular elections, these were not free and fair. For all practical purposes the GDR was a Soviet puppet state, from the West German perspective the GDR was therefore illegitimate. Three southwestern states of West Germany merged to form Baden-Württemberg in 1952, in addition to the resulting ten states, West Berlin was considered an unofficial de facto 11th state. It recognised the GDR as a de facto government within a single German nation that in turn was represented de jure by the West German state alone. From 1973 onward, East Germany recognised the existence of two German countries de jure, and the West as both de facto and de jure foreign country, the Federal Republic and the GDR agreed that neither of them could speak in the name of the other. The first chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who remained in office until 1963, had worked for an alignment with NATO rather than neutrality. He not only secured a membership in NATO but was also a proponent of agreements that developed into the present-day European Union, when the G6 was established in 1975, there was no question whether the Federal Republic of Germany would be a member as well. With the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989, symbolised by the opening of the Berlin Wall, East Germany voted to dissolve itself and accede to the Federal Republic in 1990. Its five post-war states were reconstituted along with the reunited Berlin and they formally joined the Federal Republic on 3 October 1990, raising the number of states from 10 to 16, ending the division of Germany

24.
British Isles
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The British Isles are a group of islands off the north-western coast of continental Europe that consist of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. Situated in the North Atlantic, the islands have an area of approximately 315,159 km2. Two sovereign states are located on the islands, Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the oldest rocks in the group are in the north west of Scotland, Ireland and North Wales and are 2,700 million years old. During the Silurian period the north-western regions collided with the south-east, the topography of the islands is modest in scale by global standards. Ben Nevis rises to an elevation of only 1,344 metres, and Lough Neagh, the climate is temperate marine, with mild winters and warm summers. The North Atlantic Drift brings significant moisture and raises temperatures 11 °C above the average for the latitude. This led to a landscape which was dominated by temperate rainforest. The region was re-inhabited after the last glacial period of Quaternary glaciation, Ireland, which became an island by 12,000 BC, was not inhabited until after 8000 BC. Great Britain became an island by 5600 BC, Hiberni, Pictish and Britons tribes, all speaking Insular Celtic, inhabited the islands at the beginning of the 1st millennium AD. Much of Brittonic-controlled Britain was conquered by the Roman Empire from AD43, the first Anglo-Saxons arrived as Roman power waned in the 5th century and eventually dominated the bulk of what is now England. Viking invasions began in the 9th century, followed by permanent settlements. Most of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom after the Irish War of Independence, the term British Isles is controversial in Ireland, where there are objections to its usage due to the association of the word British with Ireland. The Government of Ireland does not recognise or use the term, as a result, Britain and Ireland is used as an alternative description, and Atlantic Archipelago has had limited use among a minority in academia, while British Isles is still commonly employed. Within them, they are sometimes referred to as these islands. The earliest known references to the islands as a group appeared in the writings of sea-farers from the ancient Greek colony of Massalia. The original records have been lost, however, later writings, e. g. Avienuss Ora maritima, in the 1st century BC, Diodorus Siculus has Prettanikē nēsos, the British Island, and Prettanoi, the Britons. Strabo used Βρεττανική, and Marcian of Heraclea, in his Periplus maris exteri, historians today, though not in absolute agreement, largely agree that these Greek and Latin names were probably drawn from native Celtic-language names for the archipelago. Along these lines, the inhabitants of the islands were called the Πρεττανοί, the shift from the P of Pretannia to the B of Britannia by the Romans occurred during the time of Julius Caesar

25.
Trieste
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Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a strip of Italian territory lying between the Adriatic Sea and Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city. It is also located near Croatia some further 30 kilometres south, Trieste is located at the head of the Gulf of Trieste and throughout history it has been influenced by its location at the crossroads of Latin, Slavic, and Germanic cultures. In 2009, it had a population of about 205,000 and it is the capital of the autonomous region Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Trieste was one of the oldest parts of the Habsburg Monarchy. In the 19th century, it was the most important port of one of the Great Powers of Europe, as a prosperous seaport in the Mediterranean region, Trieste became the fourth largest city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the fin de siècle period at the end of the 19th century it emerged as an important hub for literature, Trieste underwent an economic revival during the 1930s, and Trieste was an important spot in the struggle between the Eastern and Western blocs after the Second World War. Today, the city is in one of the richest regions of Italy, Roman authors also transliterated the name as Tergestum. Modern names of the city include, Italian, Trieste, Slovene, Trst, German, Triest, Hungarian, Trieszt, Croatian, Trst, Serbian, Трст/Trst, Trieste lies in the northernmost part of the high Adriatic in northeastern Italy, near the border with Slovenia. The city lies on the Gulf of Trieste, built mostly on a hillside that becomes a mountain, Triestes urban territory lies at the foot of an imposing escarpment that comes down abruptly from the Karst Plateau towards the sea. The karst landforms close to the city reach an elevation of 458 metres above sea level and it lies on the borders of the Italian geographical region, the Balkan Peninsula, and the Mitteleuropa. The territory of Trieste is composed of different climate zones depending on the distance from the sea. The average temperatures are 5.4 °C in January and 23.3 °C in July, the climatic setting of the city is humid subtropical climate. On average, humidity levels are low, while only two months receive slightly less than 60 mm of precipitation. Trieste along with the Istrian peninsula has evenly distributed rainfall above 1,000 mm in total, snow occurs on average 0 –2 days per year. Temperatures are very mild - lows below zero are somewhat rare, winter maxima are lower than in typical Mediterranean zone with quite high minima. Summer is very warm with maxima about 28 °C and lows above 20 °C, the absolute maximum of the last fifty years is 37.2 °C in 2003, whereas the absolute minimum is −14.6 °C in 1956. Since the second millennium BC, the location was an inhabited site, originally an Illyrian settlement, the Veneti entered the region in the 10th-9th c. BC and seem to have given the town its name, Tergeste, still later, the town was later captured by the Carni, a tribe of the Eastern Alps, before becoming part of the Roman republic in 177 BC during the Istrian War

26.
Thule, Greenland
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Qaanaaq, formerly Thule or New Thule, is the main town in the northern part of the Qaasuitsup municipality in northwestern Greenland. It is one of the northernmost towns in the world, the inhabitants of Qaanaaq speak Kalaallisut and Danish, and many also speak the Inuktun language. The town has a population of 656 as of 2013, the Qaanaaq area in northern Greenland was first settled around 2000 BC by the Paleo-Eskimo migrating from the Canadian Arctic. The settlement was moved another 100 kilometers to the north. Ways of living so far north and in severe climatic conditions are passed on from generation to generation. When the sea becomes open sometime around August, large dinghies with powerful engines are used for hunting trips and ordinary journeys. It is still light twenty-four hours a day at this time - the Midnight Sun lasts from the middle of April to the end of August, Air Greenland operates fixed-wing aircraft services between Qaanaaq Airport and Upernavik Airport, with further connections to Ilulissat Airport and Qaarsut Airport. Settlement flights operate to Siorapaluk, sporadically to Moriusaq, and to Savissivik via Thule Air Base, there are a few unpaved dirt roads in Qaanaaq. Only one road leaves the town - it connects to Qaanaaq Airport, pickup trucks and SUVs are found in Qaanaaq, but skis, dogsleds and walking are better alternatives for getting around. There is a hospital in Qaanaaq with basic health care offered. More advanced care requires transfer to medical centers in Greenland by air. Dental care is offered in the form of a dentist who visits the town twice a year, a small local fire brigade is assisted by firefighters at the Thule Air Base. Local government consists of a council which is elected every four years. The town is part of the region of Qaasuitsup, which is represented by a council, Qaanaaq is home to a remote CTBTO infrasound listening station called IS-18, which uses an array of barometric sensors to detect possible nuclear tests around the world. The station is maintained by the Danish Meteorological Institute, and as of 2016 the current operator is Svend Erik Ascanius, with 656 inhabitants as of 2013, Qaanaaq is the largest settlement in the far north of the country. Its population has been stable with only minor fluctuations since the mid-1990s. The city, with its low population and tradition of hunting. Qaanaaq has a climate, and hence it has long

27.
Red Sea
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The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait, to the north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez. The Red Sea is a Global 200 ecoregion, the sea is underlain by the Red Sea Rift which is part of the Great Rift Valley. The Red Sea has an area of roughly 438,000 km2, is about 2250 km long and. It has a depth of 2211 m in the central median trench. However, there are also extensive shallow shelves, noted for their marine life, the sea is the habitat of over 1,000 invertebrate species, and 200 soft and hard corals. It is the worlds northernmost tropical sea, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Red Sea as follows, On the North. The Southern limits of the Gulfs of Suez and Aqaba, a line joining Husn Murad and Ras Siyyan. Red Sea is a translation of the Greek Erythra Thalassa, Latin Mare Rubrum, Arabic, البحر الأحمر‎. Al-Baḥr Al-Aḥmar‎, Somali Badda Cas and Tigrinya Qeyyiḥ bāḥrī, the name of the sea may signify the seasonal blooms of the red-coloured Trichodesmium erythraeum near the waters surface. A theory favored by modern scholars is that the name red is referring to the direction south. The basis of this theory is that some Asiatic languages used color words to refer to the cardinal directions, herodotus on one occasion uses Red Sea and Southern Sea interchangeably. Historically, it was known to western geographers as Mare Mecca. Some ancient geographers called the Red Sea the Arabian Gulf or Gulf of Arabia. C, in that version, the Yam Suph is translated as Erythra Thalassa. The Red Sea is one of four seas named in English after common color terms — the others being the Black Sea, the White Sea and the Yellow Sea. The direct rendition of the Greek Erythra thalassa in Latin as Mare Erythraeum refers to the part of the Indian Ocean. The earliest known exploration of the Red Sea was conducted by ancient Egyptians, one such expedition took place around 2500 BC, and another around 1500 BC. Both involved long voyages down the Red Sea, historically, scholars argued whether these trips were possible

28.
Gulf of Aden
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The Gulf of Aden is a gulf located in the Arabian Sea between Yemen, on the south coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and Somalia in the Horn of Africa. In the northwest, it connects with the Red Sea through the Bab-el-Mandeb strait and it shares its name with the port city of Aden in Yemen, which forms the northern shore of the gulf. Historically, the Gulf of Aden was known as The Gulf of Berbera, however, as the city of Aden grew during the colonial era, the name of Gulf of Aden was popularised. The waterway is part of the important Suez Canal shipping route between the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian Sea in the Indian Ocean with 21,000 ships crossing the gulf annually. The name of the Gulf was inspired by the former British Crown Colony city of Aden, the Somali names are Gacanka Cadmeed or Gacanka Saylac. The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Gulf of Aden as follows, on the Northwest – The eastern limit of the Gulf of Tadjoura. On the East – The meridian of Cape Guardafui, the temperature of the Gulf of Aden varies between 15 °C and 28 °C, depending on the season and the appearance of monsoons. The Gulf of Aden is a waterway for shipping, especially for Persian Gulf oil. Approximately 11 percent of the worlds petroleum passes through the Gulf of Aden on its way to the Suez Canal or to regional refineries. The main ports along the gulf are Aden in Yemen, Djibouti City in Djibouti, in earlier history, the city of Crater, located just south of the modern city of Aden, was an important port in regional trade. In the late 2000s, the gulf evolved into a hub of pirate activity, by 2013, attacks in the waters had steadily declined due to active private security and international navy patrols. India receives USD50 billion in imports and sends USD60 billion in exports through this area annually, because of this and for the sake of protecting the trade of other countries, India keeps a warship escort in this area. Also see Piracy in Gulf of Aden, a geologically young body of water, the Gulf of Aden has a unique biodiversity that contains many varieties of fish, coral, seabirds and invertebrates. This rich ecological diversity has benefited from a lack of pollution during the history of human habitation around the gulf. However, environmental groups fear that the lack of an effort to control pollution may jeopardize the gulfs ecosphere. Whales, dolphins, and dugongs were common before being severely reduced by commercial hunts, including by mass illegal hunts by Soviet Union

29.
Persian Gulf
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The Persian Gulf is a mediterranean sea in Western Asia. The body of water is an extension of the Indian Ocean through the Strait of Hormuz, the Shatt al-Arab river delta forms the northwest shoreline. The Persian Gulf was a battlefield of the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War and it is the namesake of the 1991 Gulf War, the largely air- and land-based conflict that followed Iraqs invasion of Kuwait. The gulf has many fishing grounds, extensive coral reefs, and abundant pearl oysters, the body of water is historically and internationally known as the Persian Gulf. Some Arab governments refer to it as the Arabian Gulf or The Gulf, the name Gulf of Iran is used by the International Hydrographic Organization. The Persian Gulf is geologically young, having been formed around 15,000 years ago. Its length is 989 kilometres, with Iran covering most of the northern coast, the Persian Gulf is about 56 km wide at its narrowest, in the Strait of Hormuz. The waters are very shallow, with a maximum depth of 90 metres. Various small islands lie within the Persian Gulf, some of which are the subject of territorial disputes between the states of the region. The International Hydrographic Organization defines the Persian Gulfs southern limit as The Northwestern limit of Gulf of Oman and this limit is defined as A line joining Ràs Limah on the coast of Arabia and Ràs al Kuh on the coast of Iran. The Persian Gulf and its areas are the worlds largest single source of crude oil. Safaniya Oil Field, the worlds largest offshore oilfield, is located in the Persian Gulf, large gas finds have also been made, with Qatar and Iran sharing a giant field across the territorial median line. Using this gas, Qatar has built up a substantial liquefied natural gas, the oil-rich countries that have a coastline on the Persian Gulf are referred to as the Persian Gulf States. In 550 BC, the Achaemenid Empire established the first ancient empire in Persis, consequently, in the Greek sources, the body of water that bordered this province came to be known as the Persian Gulf. In the travel account of Pythagoras, several chapters are related to description of his travels accompanied by the Achaemenid king Darius the Great, to Susa and Persepolis, and the area is described. This water channel separates the Iran Plateau from the Arabia Plate, has enjoyed an Iranian Identity since at least 2200 years ago. Before being given its present name, the Persian Gulf was called many different names, the classical Greek writers, like Herodotus, called it the Red Sea. In Babylonian texts, it was known as the sea above Akkad, the name of the gulf, historically and internationally known as the Persian Gulf after the land of Persia, has been disputed by some Arab countries since the 1960s

30.
Saigon
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Ho Chi Minh City, formerly named and still often known as Saigon, is the largest city in Vietnam by population. It was once known as Prey Nokor prior to annexation by the Vietnamese in the 17th century, under the name Saigon, it was the capital of the French colony of Cochinchina and later of the independent republic of South Vietnam 1955–75. On 2 July 1976, Saigon merged with the surrounding Gia Định Province and was officially renamed Ho Chi Minh City after revolutionary leader Hồ Chí Minh, the citys population is expected to grow to 13.9 million by 2025. Ho Chi Minh City has gone by different names during its history, reflecting settlement by different ethnic. In the 1690s, Nguyễn Hữu Cảnh, a Vietnamese noble, was sent by the Nguyễn rulers of Huế to establish Vietnamese administrative structures in the Mekong Delta and its surroundings. Control of the city and the passed to the Vietnamese. Immediately after the communist takeover of South Vietnam in 1975, a provisional government renamed the city after Hồ Chí Minh, even today, however, the informal name of Sài Gòn/Saigon remains in daily speech both domestically and internationally, especially among the Vietnamese diaspora. In particular, Sài Gòn is still used to refer to District 1. This name may refer to the many plants that the Khmer people had planted around Prey Nokor. It may also refer to the dense and tall forest that existed around the city. Other proposed etymologies draw parallels from Tai-Ngon, the Cantonese name of Cholon, which means embankment, and Vietnamese Sai Côn, a translation of the Khmer Prey Nokor. Prey means forest or jungle, and nokor is a Khmer word of Sanskrit origin meaning city or kingdom, the current official name, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, adopted in 1976 and abbreviated Tp. HCM, is translated as Ho Chi Minh City, abbreviated HCMC, the name commemorates Hồ Chí Minh, the first leader of North Vietnam. This name, though not his name, was one he favored throughout his later years. It combines a common Vietnamese surname with a name meaning enlightened will, in essence. Ho Chi Minh City began as a fishing village likely known as Prey Nokor, Forest City, or perhaps Preah Reach Nokor which. The area that the city now occupies was originally swampland, and was inhabited by Khmer people for centuries before the arrival of the Vietnamese. In 1623, King Chey Chettha II of Cambodia allowed Vietnamese refugees fleeing the Trịnh–Nguyễn civil war in Vietnam to settle in the area of Prey Nokor and to set up a custom house there

31.
South Vietnam
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South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam, was a state governing the southern half of Vietnam from 1955 to 1975. It received international recognition in 1949 as the State of Vietnam, the term South Vietnam became common usage in 1954, when the Geneva Conference provisionally partitioned Vietnam into communist and non-communist parts. The Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed on 26 October 1955, with Ngô Đình Diệm as its first president and its sovereignty was recognized by the United States and eighty-seven other nations. It had membership in several committees of the United Nations. After the Second World War, the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, in 1949, anti-communist Vietnamese politicians formed a rival government in Saigon led by former emperor Bảo Đại. Bảo Đại was deposed by Prime Minister Ngô Đình Diệm in 1955, after Diệm was killed in a military coup led by general Dương Văn Minh in 1963, there was a series of short-lived military governments. General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu led the country from 1967 until 1975, the Vietnam War began in 1959 with an uprising by Viet Cong forces armed and controlled by Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Fighting reached a climax during the Tet Offensive of 1968, when there were over 1.5 million South Vietnamese soldiers and 500,000 U. S. soldiers in South Vietnam. Despite a peace treaty concluded in January 1973, fighting continued until the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong armies overran Saigon on 30 April 1975, the creation of this republic, during the Indochina War, allowed France to evade a promise to recognise Vietnam as independent. This pre-Vietnam government prepared for a unified Vietnamese state, but the countrys full reunification was delayed for a year because of the problems posed by Cochinchinas legal status, Nguyễn Văn Xuân 1949–55 State of Vietnam. Roughly 60% of Vietnamese territory was controlled by the communist Việt Minh. Vietnam was partitioned at the 17th parallel in 1954, once highly lauded by America, he was ousted and assassinated in a U. S. -backed coup. In 1963–65, there were numerous coups and short-lived governments, several of which were headed by Dương Văn Minh or Nguyễn Khánh, Prime Minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ was the top leader in 1965–67. Surrendered to Communists when others abandoned their posts, 1975–76 Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam. Huỳnh Tấn Phát Before World War II, the third of Vietnam was the concession of Cochinchina. Between Tonkin in the north and Cochinchina in the south was the protectorate of Annam, Cochinchina had been annexed by France in 1862 and even elected a deputy to the French National Assembly. It was more evolved, and French interests were stronger than in parts of Indochina. During World War II, Indochina was administered by Vichy France, japanese troops overthrew the French administration on 9 March 1945, Emperor Bảo Đại proclaimed Vietnam independent

32.
Formosa
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Taiwan is an island in East Asia, located some 180 kilometres off the southeastern coast of mainland China across the Taiwan Strait. It has an area of 35,883 km2 and spans the Tropic of Cancer, the East China Sea lies to the north, the Philippine Sea to the east, the Luzon Strait directly to the south and the South China Sea to the southwest. There are several peaks over 3,500 m, the highest being Yu Shan at 3,952 metres, the tectonic boundary that formed these ranges is still active, and the island experiences many earthquakes, a few of them highly destructive. There are also many active volcanoes in the Taiwan Straits. The climate ranges from tropical in the south to subtropical in the north, the island is struck by an average of four typhoons in each year. The eastern mountains are forested and home to a diverse range of wildlife. The total area of the island is 36,193 km2 and it has a coastline of 1,139 km. The ROC claims an economic zone of 200 nmi and a territorial sea of 12 nmi. The main island of the archipelago is the island of Taiwan, the central point of the island is the Geographic Center of Taiwan in Puli Township, Nantou County. The southernmost point of the island is the Taiwan Southernmost Point in Hengchun Township, the island of Taiwan is separated from the southeast coast of China by the Taiwan Strait, which ranges from 220 km at its widest point to 130 km at its narrowest. Part of the shelf, the Strait is no more than 100 m deep. To the south, the island of Taiwan is separated from the Philippine island of Luzon by the 250 km -wide Luzon Strait, the South China Sea lies to the southwest, the East China Sea to the north, and the Philippine Sea to the east. The island of Taiwan was formed approximately 4 to 5 million years ago at a convergent boundary between the Philippine Sea Plate and the Eurasian Plate. In a boundary running the length of the island and continuing southwards in the Luzon Volcanic Arc, most of the island comprises a huge fault block tilted to the west. The western part of the island, and much of the central range, in the northeast of the island, and continuing eastwards in the Ryukyu Volcanic Arc, the Philippine Sea Plate slides under the Eurasian Plate. The tectonic boundary remains active, and Taiwan experiences 15,000 to 18,000 earthquakes each year, of which 800 to 1,000 are noticed by people. The most catastrophic recent earthquake was the magnitude-7.3 Chi-Chi earthquake, on 4 March 2010 at about 01,20 UTC, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake hit southwestern Taiwan in the mountainous area of Kaohsiung County. Another major earthquake occurred on 6 February 2016, with a magnitude of 6.4, Tainan was damaged the most, with 117 deaths, most of them caused by the collapse of a 17-story apartment building

33.
South Korea
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South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea, is a sovereign state in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. The earliest Korean pottery dates to 8000 BC, with three kingdoms flourishing in the 1st century BC and its rich and vibrant culture left 19 UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritages of Humanity, the third largest in the world, along with 12 World Heritage Sites. Annexed into Imperial Japan in 1910, Korea was divided after its surrender in 1945, peace has since mostly continued with the two agreeing to work peacefully for reunification and the South solidifying peace as a regional power with the worlds 10th largest defence budget. South Koreas tiger economy soared at an average of 10% for over 30 years in a period of rapid transformation called the Miracle on the Han River. A long legacy of openness and focus on innovation made it successful, today, it is the worlds fifth largest exporter with the G20s largest budget surplus and highest credit rating of any country in East Asia. It has free trade agreements with 75% of the economy and is the only G20 nation trading freely with China, the US. Since 1988, its constitution guarantees a liberal democracy with high government transparency, high personal freedoms led to the rise of a globally influential pop culture such as K-pop and K-drama, a phenomenon called the Korean Wave, known for its distinctive fashionable and trendy style. Home of the UN Green Climate Fund and GGGI, South Korea is a leader in low carbon growth, committed to helping developing countries as a major DAC. It is the third least ignorant country in the Index of Ignorance, ranking eighth highest for peaceful tolerance. It is the worlds largest spender on R&D per GDP, leading the OECD in graduates in science, the name Korea derives from the name Goryeo. The name Goryeo itself was first used by the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo in the 5th century as a form of its name. The 10th-century kingdom of Goryeo succeeded Goguryeo, and thus inherited its name, the modern spelling of Korea first appeared in the late 17th century in the travel writings of the Dutch East India Companys Hendrick Hamel. After Goryeo was replaced by Joseon in 1392, Joseon became the name for the entire territory. The new official name has its origin in the ancient country of Gojoseon, in 1897, the Joseon dynasty changed the official name of the country from Joseon to Daehan Jeguk. The name Daehan, which means great Han literally, derives from Samhan, however, the name Joseon was still widely used by Koreans to refer to their country, though it was no longer the official name. Under Japanese rule, the two names Han and Joseon coexisted, there were several groups who fought for independence, the most notable being the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea. Following the surrender of Japan, in 1945, the Republic of Korea was adopted as the name for the new country. Since the government only controlled the part of the Korean Peninsula

34.
U.S. West Coast
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The West Coast or Pacific Coast is the coastline along which the contiguous Western United States meets the North Pacific Ocean. As a region, this term most often refers to the states of California. More specifically, it refers to an area defined on the east by the Cascade Range, Sierra Nevada and Mojave Desert, the U. S. Census groups the five states of California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii together as the Pacific States division. As of the 2010 Census, the population of the Census Bureaus Pacific Region was approximately 47.8 million – about 15. 3% of US population. The largest city on the west coast of the United States is Los Angeles, small isolated groups of hunter-gatherers migrated alongside herds of large herbivores far into Alaska. Between 16,500 BCE and 13,500 BCE, ice-free corridors developed along the Pacific coast and valleys of North America, Alaska Natives, indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, and California indigenous peoples eventually descended from the Paleo-Indians. They developed various languages and established trade routes, later, Spanish, British, French, Russian, and American explorers and settlers began colonizing the area. The West Coast of the United States has a climate in its Northern edge towards the Canada–US border. The coastline sees significantly mild temperatures when compared to the areas during summer. In far Northern California there is a difference of 17 °C between Eurekas and Willow Creek in spite of only 25 miles separating the locations and Willow Creek being located at a 500 metres elevation, coastal fog is also prevalent in keeping shoreline temperatures cool. Since the West Coast has been populated by more recently than the East Coast. Additionally, its demographic composition underlies its cultural difference from the rest of the United States. Californias history first as a major Spanish colony, and later Mexican territory, has given the lower West Coast a distinctive Hispanic tone, which it also shares with the rest of the Southwest. Similarly, two of the three cities in which Asian Americans have concentrated, San Francisco and Los Angeles, are located on the West Coast, San Franciscos Chinatown, the oldest in North America, is a vibrant cultural center. The West Coast also has a large share of green cities within the United States. Other writers, like Jean Baudrillard, Mike Davis, and Umberto Eco, have made related statements on Californian culture, in the Northwest, Portland and Seattle are both considered among the coffee capitals of the world. While Starbucks originated in Seattle, both towns are known for coffee roasters and independent coffeeshops. In the Pacific Northwest at large, which includes the Canadian west coast, the culture has significantly shaped by the environment, especially by its forests, mountains

35.
Indian Ocean
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The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the worlds oceanic divisions, covering 70,560,000 km2. It is bounded by Asia on the north, on the west by Africa, on the east by Australia, the Indian Ocean is known as Ratnākara, the mine of gems in ancient Sanskrit literature, and as Hind Mahāsāgar, in Hindi. The northernmost extent of the Indian Ocean is approximately 30° north in the Persian Gulf, the oceans continental shelves are narrow, averaging 200 kilometres in width. An exception is found off Australias western coast, where the width exceeds 1,000 kilometres. The average depth of the ocean is 3,890 m and its deepest point is Diamantina Deep in Diamantina Trench, at 8,047 m deep, Sunda Trench has a depth of 7, 258–7,725 m. North of 50° south latitude, 86% of the basin is covered by pelagic sediments. The remaining 14% is layered with terrigenous sediments, glacial outwash dominates the extreme southern latitudes. The major choke points include Bab el Mandeb, Strait of Hormuz, the Lombok Strait, the Strait of Malacca, the Indian Ocean is artificially connected to the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal, which is accessible via the Red Sea. All of the Indian Ocean is in the Eastern Hemisphere and the centre of the Eastern Hemisphere is in this ocean, marginal seas, gulfs, bays and straits of the Indian Ocean include, The climate north of the equator is affected by a monsoon climate. Strong north-east winds blow from October until April, from May until October south, in the Arabian Sea the violent Monsoon brings rain to the Indian subcontinent. In the southern hemisphere, the winds are milder. When the monsoon winds change, cyclones sometimes strike the shores of the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean is the warmest ocean in the world. Long-term ocean temperature records show a rapid, continuous warming in the Indian Ocean, Indian Ocean warming is the largest among the tropical oceans, and about 3 times faster than the warming observed in the Pacific. Research indicates that human induced greenhouse warming, and changes in the frequency, among the few large rivers flowing into the Indian Ocean are the Zambezi, Shatt al-Arab, Indus, Godavari, Krishna, Narmada, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Jubba and Irrawaddy River. The oceans currents are controlled by the monsoon. Two large gyres, one in the northern hemisphere flowing clockwise and one south of the equator moving anticlockwise, during the winter monsoon, however, currents in the north are reversed. Deep water circulation is controlled primarily by inflows from the Atlantic Ocean, the Red Sea, north of 20° south latitude the minimum surface temperature is 22 °C, exceeding 28 °C to the east. Southward of 40° south latitude, temperatures drop quickly, surface water salinity ranges from 32 to 37 parts per 1000, the highest occurring in the Arabian Sea and in a belt between southern Africa and south-western Australia

36.
Circumnavigated the globe
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Circumnavigation means to travel all the way around the entire planet, or an island, or continent. This article is concerned with circumnavigation of the Earth, the first known circumnavigation of Earth was the Magellan-Elcano expedition, which sailed from Seville, Spain, in 1519 and returned in 1522 after crossing the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. The word circumnavigation is a formed from the verb circumnavigate, from the past participle of the Latin verb circumnavigare. If a person walks completely around either Pole, they cross all meridians, the trajectory of a true circumnavigation forms a continuous loop on the surface of Earth separating two halves of comparable area. A basic definition of a global circumnavigation would be a route which covers roughly a great circle, in practice, people use different definitions of world circumnavigation to accommodate practical constraints, depending on the method of travel. The first single voyage of global circumnavigation was that of the ship Victoria and it was a Castilian voyage of discovery, led initially by Ferdinand Magellan between 1519 and 1521, and then by the Basque Juan Sebastián Elcano from 1521 to 1522. It then continued across the Pacific discovering a number of islands on its way, Elcano and a small group of 18 men were actually the only members of the expedition to make the full circumnavigation. However, traveling west from Europe, in 1521, Magellan reached a region of Southeast Asia, Magellan thereby achieved a nearly complete personal circumnavigation of the globe for the first time in history. In 1577, Elizabeth I sent Francis Drake to start an expedition against the Spanish along the Pacific coast of the Americas, Drake set out from Plymouth, England in November 1577, aboard Pelican, which Drake renamed Golden Hind mid-voyage. In June 1579, Drake landed somewhere north of Spains northern-most claim in Alta California, Drake completed the second circumnavigation of the world in September 1580, becoming the first commander to lead an entire circumnavigation. For the wealthy, long voyages around the world, such as was done by Ulysses S. Grant, became possible in the 19th century, however, it was later improvements in technology and rising incomes that made such trips relatively common. The nautical global circumnavigation record is held by a wind-powered vessel. It can be seen that the route roughly approximates a great circle, in yacht racing, a round-the-world route approximating a great circle would be quite impractical, particularly in a non-stop race where use of the Panama and Suez Canals would be impossible. The second map on the shows the route of the Vendée Globe round-the-world race in red. It can be seen that the route does not pass through any pairs of antipodal points and it is allowed to have one single waypoint to lengthen the calculated track. The voyage followed the North Atlantic Ocean, Equator, South Atlantic Ocean, Southern Ocean, South Atlantic Ocean, Equator, since the advent of world cruises in 1922, by Cunards Laconia, thousands of people have completed circumnavigations of the globe at a more leisurely pace. Typically, these voyages begin in New York City or Southampton, routes vary, either travelling through the Caribbean and then into the Pacific Ocean via the Panama Canal, or around Cape Horn. From there ships usually make their way to Hawaii, the islands of the South Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, then northward to Hong Kong, South East Asia, and India

37.
Panama Canal
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The Panama Canal is an artificial 48-mile waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a key conduit for maritime trade. The original locks are 33.5 metres wide, a third, wider lane of locks was constructed between September 2007 and May 2016. The expanded canal began operation on June 26,2016. The new locks allow transit of larger, Post-Panamax ships, capable of handling more cargo, France began work on the canal in 1881 but stopped due to engineering problems and a high worker mortality rate. The United States took over the project in 1904 and opened the canal on August 15,1914, Colombia, France, and later the United States controlled the territory surrounding the canal during construction. The U. S. continued to control the canal and surrounding Panama Canal Zone until the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties provided for handover to Panama. After a period of joint American–Panamanian control, in 1999 the canal was taken over by the Panamanian government and is now managed and operated by the government-owned Panama Canal Authority. Annual traffic has risen from about 1,000 ships in 1914, by 2012, more than 815,000 vessels had passed through the canal. It takes six to eight hours to pass through the Panama Canal, the American Society of Civil Engineers has called the Panama Canal one of the seven wonders of the modern world. Such a route would have given the Spanish a military advantage over the Portuguese, during an expedition from 1788 to 1793, Alessandro Malaspina outlined plans for its construction. Given the strategic location of Panama and the potential offered by its narrow isthmus separating two great oceans, other links in the area were attempted over the years. The ill-fated Darien scheme was launched by the Kingdom of Scotland in 1698 to set up a trade route. Generally inhospitable conditions thwarted the effort, and it was abandoned in April 1700, another effort was made in 1843. They referred to it as the Atlantic and Pacific Canal and it was a wholly British endeavor and it was expected to be completed in five years, but the plan was never carried out. At nearly the same time, other ideas were floated, including a canal across Mexicos Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Nothing came of that plan either. )In 1846 the Mallarino–Bidlack Treaty, negotiated between the U. S. and New Granada, granted the United States transit rights and the right to intervene militarily in the isthmus. In 1849, the discovery of gold in California created great interest in a crossing between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Panama Railway was built by the United States to cross the isthmus and opened in 1855

38.
Suez Canal
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The Suez Canal is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez. It was constructed by the Suez Canal Company between 1859 and 1869, after 10 years of construction, it was officially opened on November 17,1869. It extends from the terminus of Port Said to the southern terminus of Port Tewfik at the city of Suez. Its length is 193.30 km, including its northern and southern access channels, in 2012,17,225 vessels traversed the canal. The original canal was a waterway with passing locations in the Ballah Bypass. It contains no locks system, with seawater flowing freely through it, in general, the canal north of the Bitter Lakes flows north in winter and south in summer. South of the lakes, the current changes with the tide at Suez, the canal is owned and maintained by the Suez Canal Authority of Egypt. Under the Convention of Constantinople, it may be used in time of war as in time of peace, by every vessel of commerce or of war, without distinction of flag. In August 2014, construction was launched to expand and widen the Ballah Bypass for 35 km to speed the canals transit time, the expansion was planned to double the capacity of the Suez Canal from 49 to 97 ships a day. At a cost of $8.4 billion, this project was funded with interest-bearing investment certificates issued exclusively to Egyptian entities, the New Suez Canal, as the expansion was dubbed, was opened with great fanfare in a ceremony on 6 August 2015. On 24 February 2016, the Suez Canal Authority officially opened the new side channel and this side channel, located at the northern side of the east extension of the Suez Canal, serves the East Terminal for berthing and unberthing vessels from the terminal anytime of day and night. Ancient west–east canals were built to travel from the Nile River to the Red Sea. One smaller canal is believed to have been constructed under the auspices of Senusret II or Ramesses II. Another canal, probably incorporating a portion of the first, was constructed under the reign of Necho II, the legendary Sesostris may have started work on an ancient canal joining the Nile with the Red Sea. In his Meteorology, Aristotle wrote, One of their kings tried to make a canal to it, so he first, and Darius afterwards, stopped making the canal, lest the sea should mix with the river water and spoil it. Strabo wrote that Sesostris started to build a canal, and Pliny the Elder wrote,165. Later the Persian king Darius had the idea, and yet again Ptolemy II. This proved to be the canal made by the Persian king Darius I

39.
Gibraltar
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Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula. It has an area of 6.7 km2 and shares its border with Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the landmark of the region. At its foot is a populated city area, home to over 30,000 Gibraltarians. An Anglo-Dutch force captured Gibraltar from Spain in 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession on behalf of the Habsburg claim to the Spanish throne, the territory was subsequently ceded to Great Britain in perpetuity under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Today Gibraltars economy is based largely on tourism, online gambling, financial services, the sovereignty of Gibraltar is a major point of contention in Anglo-Spanish relations as Spain asserts a claim to the territory. Gibraltarians overwhelmingly rejected proposals for Spanish sovereignty in a 1967 referendum, under the Gibraltar constitution of 2006, Gibraltar governs its own affairs, though some powers, such as defence and foreign relations, remain the responsibility of the British government. The name Gibraltar is the Spanish derivation of the Arabic name Jabal Ṭāriq, earlier, it was known as Mons Calpe, a name of Phoenician origin and one of the Pillars of Hercules. The pronunciation of the name in modern Spanish is, evidence of Neanderthal habitation in Gibraltar between 28,000 and 24,000 BP has been discovered at Gorhams Cave, making Gibraltar possibly the last known holdout of the Neanderthals. Within recorded history, the first inhabitants were the Phoenicians, around 950 BC, subsequently, Gibraltar became known as one of the Pillars of Hercules, after the Greek legend of the creation of the Strait of Gibraltar by Heracles. The Carthaginians and Romans also established semi-permanent settlements, after the collapse of the Roman Empire, Gibraltar came briefly under the control of the Vandals. The area later formed part of the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania from 414 AD until the Islamic conquest of Iberia in 711 AD, in 1160, the Almohad Sultan Abd al-Mumin ordered that a permanent settlement, including a castle, be built. It received the name of Medinat al-Fath, on completion of the works in the town, the Sultan crossed the Strait to look at the works and stayed in Gibraltar for two months. The Tower of Homage of the Moorish Castle remains standing today, from 1274 onwards, the town was fought over and captured by the Nasrids of Granada, the Marinids of Morocco and the kings of Castile. In 1462, Gibraltar was finally captured by Juan Alonso de Guzmán, after the conquest, King Henry IV of Castile assumed the additional title of King of Gibraltar, establishing it as part of the comarca of the Campo Llano de Gibraltar. In 1501, Gibraltar passed back to the Spanish Crown, the occupation of the town by Alliance forces caused the exodus of the population to the surrounding area of the Campo de Gibraltar. As the Alliances campaign faltered, the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht was negotiated and ceded control of Gibraltar to Britain to secure Britains withdrawal from the war. Unsuccessful attempts by Spanish monarchs to regain Gibraltar were made with the siege of 1727 and again with the Great Siege of Gibraltar, during the American War of Independence

40.
Cape Town
–
Cape Town is a coastal city in South Africa. It is the second-most populous urban area in South Africa after Johannesburg and it is also the capital and primate city of the Western Cape province. As the seat of the Parliament of South Africa, it is also the capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality, the city is famous for its harbour, for its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, and for such well-known landmarks as Table Mountain and Cape Point. As of 2014, it is the 10th most populous city in Africa and it is one of the most multicultural cities in the world, reflecting its role as a major destination for immigrants and expatriates to South Africa. The city was named the World Design Capital for 2014 by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design, in 2014, Cape Town was named the best place in the world to visit by both the American New York Times and the British Daily Telegraph. Located on the shore of Table Bay, Cape Town was first developed by the Dutch East India Company as a station for Dutch ships sailing to East Africa, India. Jan van Riebeecks arrival on 6 April 1652 established the first permanent European settlement in South Africa, Cape Town quickly outgrew its original purpose as the first European outpost at the Castle of Good Hope, becoming the economic and cultural hub of the Cape Colony. Until the Witwatersrand Gold Rush and the development of Johannesburg, Cape Town was the largest city in South Africa, the earliest known remnants in the region were found at Peers Cave in Fish Hoek and date to between 15,000 and 12,000 years ago. It was later renamed by John II of Portugal as Cape of Good Hope because of the optimism engendered by the opening of a sea route to India. Vasco da Gama recorded a sighting of the Cape of Good Hope in 1497, in the late 16th century, Portuguese, French, Danish, Dutch and English but mainly Portuguese ships regularly stopped over in Table Bay en route to the Indies. They traded tobacco, copper and iron with the Khoikhoi in exchange for fresh meat, the settlement grew slowly during this period, as it was hard to find adequate labour. This labour shortage prompted the authorities to import slaves from Indonesia, many of these became ancestors of the first Cape Coloured communities. Some of these, including grapes, cereals, ground nuts, potatoes, apples and citrus, had an important, the Dutch Republic being transformed in Revolutionary Frances vassal Batavian Republic, Great Britain moved to take control of its colonies. Britain captured Cape Town in 1795, but the Cape was returned to the Dutch by treaty in 1803, British forces occupied the Cape again in 1806 following the Battle of Blaauwberg. In the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814, Cape Town was permanently ceded to Britain and it became the capital of the newly formed Cape Colony, whose territory expanded very substantially through the 1800s. With expansion came calls for independence from Britain, with the Cape attaining its own parliament. Suffrage was established according to the non-racial, but sexist Cape Qualified Franchise, the discovery of diamonds in Griqualand West in 1867, and the Witwatersrand Gold Rush in 1886, prompted a flood of immigrants to South Africa

41.
Durban, South Africa
–
Durban is the largest city in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal. Durbans metropolitan municipality ranks third among the most populous areas in South Africa after Johannesburg. It is also the second most important manufacturing hub in South Africa after Johannesburg and it forms part of the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality. Durban is famous for being the busiest port in South Africa and it is also seen as one of the major centres of tourism because of the citys warm subtropical climate and extensive beaches. It is the largest city in KwaZulu-Natal which is the 2nd most populous province in South Africa and it has the highest number of dollar millionaires added per year of any South African city with the number rising 200% between 2000 and 2014. In May 2015, Durban was officially recognised as one of the New7Wonders Cities together with Vigan, Doha, La Paz, Havana, Beirut, archaeological evidence from the Drakensberg mountains suggests that the Durban area has been inhabited by communities of hunter-gatherers since 100,000 BC. He named the area Natal, or Christmas in Portuguese, accompanying Farewell was an adventurer named Henry Francis Fynn. Fynn was able to befriend the Zulu King Shaka by helping him to recover from a wound he suffered in battle. As a token of Shakas gratitude, he granted Fynn a 30-mile strip of coast a hundred miles in depth. During a meeting of 35 European residents in Fynns territory on 23 June 1835, it was decided to build a town and name it dUrban after Sir Benjamin dUrban. The Voortrekkers established the Republic of Natalia in 1838, with its capital at Pietermaritzburg, piet Retief, leader of the Voortrekkers in Natal, negotiated with the Zulu King, Dingane, in order to obtain land for their farming purposes. After negotiations were concluded, Dingane however reneged and had Retief, thereafter the Zulus attacked and killed more than 500 Voortrekkers at Retiefs laager. The Voortrekkers retaliated and broke Dinganes power at the Battle of Blood River, the force arrived on 4 May 1842 and built a fortification that was later to be The Old Fort. On the night of 23/24 May 1842 the British attacked the Voortrekker camp at Congella, the attack failed, and the British had to withdraw to their camp which was put under siege. A local trader Dick King and his servant Ndongeni were able to escape the blockade and rode to Grahamstown, the reinforcements arrived in Durban 20 days later, the Voortrekkers retreated, and the siege was lifted. Fierce conflict with the Zulu population led to the evacuation of Durban, a British governor was appointed to the region and many settlers emigrated from Europe and the Cape Colony. The British established a sugar industry in the 1860s. Farm owners had a difficult time attracting Zulu labourers to work on their plantations, as a result of the importation of Indian labourers, Durban has the largest Asian community on the African continent, and has the largest Indian population outside of India

42.
Kenya
–
Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country in Africa and a founding member of the East African Community. Its capital and largest city is Nairobi and it is bordered by Tanzania to the south and southwest, Uganda to the west, South Sudan to the north-west, Ethiopia to the north and Somalia to the north-east. Kenya covers 581,309 km2, and had a population of approximately 48 million people in January 2017, Kenya has a warm and humid tropical climate on its Indian Ocean coastline. The climate is cooler in the grasslands around the capital city, Nairobi, and especially closer to Mount Kenya. Further inland are highlands in Central and Rift Valley regions where tea, in the West are Nyanza and Western regions, there is an equatorial, hot and dry climate which becomes humid around Lake Victoria, the largest tropical fresh-water lake in the world. This gives way to temperate and forested areas in the neighbouring western region. The north-eastern regions along the border with Somalia and Ethiopia are arid and semi-arid areas with near-desert landscapes, Kenya is known for its world class athletes in track and field and rugby. The African Great Lakes region, which Kenya is a part of, has been inhabited by humans since the Lower Paleolithic period, by the first millennium AD, the Bantu expansion had reached the area from West-Central Africa. Bantu and Nilotic populations together constitute around 97% of the nations residents, European and Arab presence in coastal Mombasa dates to the Early Modern period, European exploration of the interior began in the 19th century. The British Empire established the East Africa Protectorate in 1895, which starting in 1920 gave way to the Kenya Colony, Kenya obtained independence in December 1963. Following a referendum in August 2010 and adoption of a new constitution, Kenya is now divided into 47 semi-autonomous counties, the capital, Nairobi, is a regional commercial hub. The economy of Kenya is the largest by GDP in East, agriculture is a major employer, the country traditionally exports tea and coffee and has more recently begun to export fresh flowers to Europe. The service industry is also an economic driver. Additionally, Kenya is a member of the East African Community trading bloc, the Republic of Kenya is named after Mount Kenya. The origin of the name Kenya is not clear, but perhaps linked to the Kikuyu, Embu and Kamba words Kirinyaga, Kirenyaa, if so, then the British may not so much have mispronounced it, as misspelled it. In the 19th century, the German explorer Johann Ludwig Krapf was staying with the Bantu Kamba people when he first spotted the mountain. On asking for the name of the mountain, he was told Kĩ-Nyaa or Kĩĩma- Kĩĩnyaa probably because the pattern of black rock, the Agikuyu, who inhabit the slopes of Mt. Kenya, call it Kĩrĩma Kĩrĩnyaga in Kikuyu, which is quite similar to the Kamba name. Ludwig Krapf recorded the name as both Kenia and Kegnia believed by most to be a corruption of the Kamba version, others say that this was—on the contrary—a very precise notation of a correct African pronunciation /ˈkɛnjə/

Czechoslovakia
–
From 1939 to 1945, following its forced division and partial incorporation into Nazi Germany, the state did not de facto exist but its government-in-exile continued to operate. From 1948 to 1990, Czechoslovakia was part of the Soviet bloc with a command economy and its economic status was formalized in membership of Comecon from 1949, and its defen

1.
Czechoslovak troops in Vladivostok (1918)

2.
Flag since 1920

3.
The car in which Reinhard Heydrich was killed

4.
Spartakiad in 1960

Maritime Commission
–
It also formed the United States Maritime Service for the training of seagoing ships officers to man the new fleet. The purpose of the Maritime Commission was multifold as described in the Merchant Marine Acts Declaration of Policy. S, Merchant Marine prior to the Act. Another function given to the Commission involved the formation of the U. S. Mar

1.
Seal of the United States Maritime Commission

2.
"Are you missing from this picture?" WWII United States Maritime Commission poster

Medal of Honor
–
The medal is normally awarded by the President of the United States in the name of the U. S. Congress. There are three versions of the medal, one for the Army, one for the Navy, personnel of the Marine Corps and Coast Guard receive the Navy version. U. S. awards including the Medal of Honor do not have titles and while there is no official abbrevia

1.
Army, Navy, and Air Force versions of the Medal of Honor

2.
Medal of Honor (without the suspension ribbon) awarded to Seaman John Ortega in 1864 (back view of medal).

3.
Army version

4.
Navy version

Portland, Oregon
–
Portland is a port and the largest city in the U. S. state of Oregon and the seat of Multnomah County. It is in the Willamette Valley region of the Pacific Northwest, at the confluence of the Willamette, the city covers 145 square miles and had an estimated population of 632,309 in 2015, making it the 26th most populous city in the United States. A

Battle star
–
The service star may also be referred to as a campaign star or battle star depending on which award is authorized the star and the manner in which the device is used for the award. Service stars, Campaign stars, and Battle stars are worn with one point of the star pointing up on the ribbon of a medal. A silver star is worn instead of five bronze st

1.
Bronze and Silver Service Stars

Cargo ship
–
A cargo ship or freighter is any sort of ship or vessel that carries cargo, goods, and materials from one port to another. Thousands of cargo carriers ply the worlds seas and oceans each year, cargo ships are usually specially designed for the task, often being equipped with cranes and other mechanisms to load and unload, and come in all sizes. Tod

1.
The Colombo Express, one of the largest container ships in the world (when she was built in 2005), owned and operated by Hapag-Lloyd of Germany

2.
Loading of a general cargo vessel in 1959

3.
A Delmas container ship unloading at the Zanzibar port in Tanzania

Horsepower
–
Horsepower is a unit of measurement of power. There are many different standards and types of horsepower, two common definitions being used today are the mechanical horsepower, which is approximately 746 watts, and the metric horsepower, which is approximately 735.5 watts. The term was adopted in the late 18th century by Scottish engineer James Wat

1.
A team of six horses mowing hay in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

Drive shaft
–
As torque carriers, drive shafts are subject to torsion and shear stress, equivalent to the difference between the input torque and the load. They must therefore be enough to bear the stress, whilst avoiding too much additional weight as that would in turn increase their inertia. The term drive shaft first appeared during the mid 19th century, in S

1.
Drive shaft with universal joints at each end and a spline in the centre

3.
A truck double propeller shaft

4.
The exposed drive shaft on BMW's first motorcycle, the R32

Knot (unit)
–
The knot is a unit of speed equal to one nautical mile per hour, approximately 1.151 mph. The ISO Standard symbol for the knot is kn, the same symbol is preferred by the IEEE, kt is also common. The knot is a unit that is accepted for use with the SI. Etymologically, the term derives from counting the number of knots in the line that unspooled from

1.
Graphic scale from a Mercator projection world map, showing the change with latitude

5"/38 caliber gun
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The Mark 12 5/38 caliber gun was a US naval gun. The gun was installed into Single Purpose and Dual Purpose mounts used primarily by the US Navy, the 38 caliber barrel was a mid-length compromise between the previous United States standard 5/51 low-angle gun and 5/25 anti-aircraft gun. The increased barrel length provided greatly improved performan

1.
Two Mk 30 single enclosed base ring mounts on a Fletcher-class destroyer.

2.
Mk 12 gun assembly

3.
Vertical Sliding Wedge Breech Block.

4.
Drawing of the recoil and counter-recoil systems. The Arrow shows the motion of the Housing in the Slide during Recoil.

3"/50 caliber gun
–
For Army 3-inch gun see 3-inch M1918 gun The 3″/50 caliber gun in United States naval gun terminology indicates the gun fired a projectile 3 inches in diameter, and the barrel was 50 calibers long. Different guns of this caliber were used by the U. S. Navy and U. S. Coast Guard from 1890 through the 1990s on a variety of combatant and transport shi

1.
3 Inch / 50 Cal Gun (Mk 22)

2.
USS Pivot firing its forward 3″/50 caliber gun.

3.
3″/50 caliber gun aboard USS Slater

4.
3″/50 Mk. 22 in Mk. 22 Mounting in Aalborg Maritime Museum

Oerlikon 20 mm cannon
–
The Oerlikon 20 mm cannon is a series of autocannons, based on an original German 20 mm Becker design that appeared very early in World War I. It was widely produced by Oerlikon Contraves and others, with various models employed by both Allied and Axis forces during World War II, and many still in use today. During World War I, the German Reinhold

1.
A modern Oerlikon cannon (Oerlikon 20mm/85 KAA) on a Royal Navy warship

Victory ship
–
The Victory ship was a class of cargo ship produced in large numbers by North American shipyards during World War II to replace losses caused by German submarines. A total of 531 Victory ships were built, one of the first acts of the United States War Shipping Administration upon its formation in February 1942 was to commission the design of what c

3.
War Shipping Administration photo showing early 1944 Victory ship construction at California Shipbuilding Corporation with a May, 1945 war tonnage production chart

Emergency Shipbuilding program
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The Emergency Shipbuilding Program was a United States government effort to quickly build simple cargo ships to carry troops and material to allies and foreign theatres during World War II. Run by the U. S. Maritime Commission, the program built almost 6,000 ships, by the fall of 1940, the British Merchant Navy was being sunk in the Battle of the A

1.
U.S. Maritime Commission "Ships for Victory" emblem

2.
Liberty ship Joseph M. Terrel at Brunswick, GA c. 1944

U.S. Army
–
The United States Army is the largest branch of the United States Armed Forces and performs land-based military operations. After the Revolutionary War, the Congress of the Confederation created the United States Army on 3 June 1784, the United States Army considers itself descended from the Continental Army, and dates its institutional inception f

1.
Storming of Redoubt #10 in the Siege of Yorktown during the American Revolutionary War prompted the British government to begin negotiations, resulting in the Treaty of Paris and British recognition of the United States of America.

2.
Emblem of the United States Department of the Army

3.
General Andrew Jackson stands on the parapet of his makeshift defenses as his troops repulse attacking Highlanders during the defense of New Orleans, the final major battle of the War of 1812

4.
The Battle of Gettysburg, the turning point of the American Civil War

U.S. Maritime Commission
–
It also formed the United States Maritime Service for the training of seagoing ships officers to man the new fleet. The purpose of the Maritime Commission was multifold as described in the Merchant Marine Acts Declaration of Policy. S, Merchant Marine prior to the Act. Another function given to the Commission involved the formation of the U. S. Mar

1.
Seal of the United States Maritime Commission

2.
"Are you missing from this picture?" WWII United States Maritime Commission poster

War Shipping Administration
–
The War Shipping Administration was a World War II emergency war agency of the US government, tasked to purchase and operate the civilian shipping tonnage the US needed for fighting the war. Both shipbuilding under the Maritime Commission and ship allocation under the WSA to Army, land who continued as head of the Maritime Commission while also hea

National Defense Reserve Fleet
–
The NDRF is managed by the U. S. Department of Transportations Maritime Administration. It is a different entity from the United States Navy reserve fleets, NDRF vessels are at the fleet sites at James River, Virginia–the James River Reserve Fleet, Beaumont, Texas–the Beaumont Reserve Fleet, and Suisun Bay, California, and at designated outported b

1.
NDRF ships at Suisun Bay, California

2.
USS Iowa (BB-61) was in the custody of MARAD in the NDRF at Suisun Bay from 2001 to 2011.

3.
Inactive U.S. Navy auxiliary ships of the James River Reserve Fleet (1996)

4.
Mothballed ships in Suisun Bay, California in 2010. The battleship Iowa can be seen at the far end of the first row

James River
–
The James River is a river in the U. S. state of Virginia. It is 348 miles long, extending to 444 miles if one includes the Jackson River, the James River drains a catchment comprising 10,432 square miles. The watershed includes about 4% open water and an area with a population of 2.5 million people and it is the 12th longest river in the United St

1.
James River at the crossing of the Blue Ridge Parkway

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The James, hidden by trees, at Percival's Island Riverwalk in Lynchburg, Virginia

3.
James River at Huntington Park Beach in Newport News

4.
ACL Railroad crossing at the falls in Richmond.

Reserve Fleet
–
A reserve fleet is a collection of naval vessels of all types that are fully equipped for service but are not currently needed, and thus partially or fully decommissioned. A reserve fleet is said to be in mothballs or mothballed. In earlier times, and especially in British usage, these ships were said to be laid up in ordinary and they may be modif

1.
HMS Vanguard, part of the British Reserve Fleet before she was scrapped

2.
Ships of the U.S. Navy 's Reserve Fleet in the Reserve Basin at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, 1956

3.
HMS Unicorn in ordinary

Army Transportation Service
–
The United States Army Transport Service operated Army transport ships for both troop transport and cargo service between United States ports and overseas posts. ATS operated the Armys large ships but did not operate smaller vessels of the boat service. From that time until absorbed into the United States Army Transportation Corps to operate under

1.
USAT McClellan (Transport, 1898–1919)

2.
USAT Admiral H. T. Mayo: Serving as an Army transport circa 1947. The Army soon renamed her USAT General Nelson M. Walker.

Military Sea Transportation Service
–
The Military Sealift Command is a United States Navy organization that controls the replenishment and military transport ships of the Navy. The United States Military Sealift Command has the responsibility for providing sealift and it first came into existence on 9 July 1949 when the Military Sea Transportation Service became solely responsible for

1.
The logo of Military Sealift Command shows an outline of a grey ship on a stylized ocean displaying blue and gold stripes.

West Germany
–
West Germany is the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation on 23 May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990. During this Cold War era, NATO-aligned West Germany and Warsaw Pact-aligned East Germany were divided by the Inner German border, after 1961 West Berlin was physically separa

1.
Konrad Adenauer in parliament, 1955

2.
Flag

3.
Rudi Dutschke, student leader.

4.
The Volkswagen Beetle – for many years the most successful car in the world – on the assembly line in Wolfsburg factory, 1973.

British Isles
–
The British Isles are a group of islands off the north-western coast of continental Europe that consist of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. Situated in the North Atlantic, the islands have an area of approximately 315,159 km2. Two sovereign states are located on the islands, Ireland and the United Kingdom o

1.
Satellite image of the British Isles, excluding Shetland and the Channel Islands (out of frame)

2.
Some female red deer in Killarney National Park, Ireland.

3.
The Alfred Jewel (9th century)

4.
James VI of Scotland (James I of England)

Trieste
–
Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a strip of Italian territory lying between the Adriatic Sea and Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city. It is also located near Croatia some further 30 kilometres south, Trieste is located at the head of the Gulf of Trieste and through

1.
A collage of Trieste showing the Piazza Unità d'Italia, the Canal Grande (Grand Canal), the Serbian Orthodox church, a narrow street of the Old City, the Castello Miramare and the city seafront.

2.
Remains of a Roman arch in Trieste's Old City

3.
Trieste in the 17th century, in a contemporary image by the Carniolan historian Johann Weikhard von Valvasor

4.
The Stock Exchange Square in 1854

Thule, Greenland
–
Qaanaaq, formerly Thule or New Thule, is the main town in the northern part of the Qaasuitsup municipality in northwestern Greenland. It is one of the northernmost towns in the world, the inhabitants of Qaanaaq speak Kalaallisut and Danish, and many also speak the Inuktun language. The town has a population of 656 as of 2013, the Qaanaaq area in no

Red Sea
–
The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait, to the north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez. The Red Sea is a Global 200 ecoregion, the sea is underlain by the Red Sea Rift which is part of the Great Ri

1.
Red Sea

2.
Tihama on the Red Sea near Khaukha, Yemen

3.
Annotated view of the Nile and Red Sea, with a dust storm

4.
Dust storm over the Red Sea

Gulf of Aden
–
The Gulf of Aden is a gulf located in the Arabian Sea between Yemen, on the south coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and Somalia in the Horn of Africa. In the northwest, it connects with the Red Sea through the Bab-el-Mandeb strait and it shares its name with the port city of Aden in Yemen, which forms the northern shore of the gulf. Historically, the

1.
A dhow in the Gulf of Aden.

2.
Gulf of Aden

Persian Gulf
–
The Persian Gulf is a mediterranean sea in Western Asia. The body of water is an extension of the Indian Ocean through the Strait of Hormuz, the Shatt al-Arab river delta forms the northwest shoreline. The Persian Gulf was a battlefield of the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War and it is the namesake of the 1991 Gulf War, the largely air- and land-based confl

1.
Persian Gulf from space

2.
A historical map of the Persian Gulf in a Dubai museum with the word Persian removed

3.
Picture depicting extent of early civilizations around the Persian Gulf, including Lackhmids, and Sassanids.

4.
Picture depicting the Achaemenid Persian empire in relation to the Persian Gulf.

Saigon
–
Ho Chi Minh City, formerly named and still often known as Saigon, is the largest city in Vietnam by population. It was once known as Prey Nokor prior to annexation by the Vietnamese in the 17th century, under the name Saigon, it was the capital of the French colony of Cochinchina and later of the independent republic of South Vietnam 1955–75. On 2

1.
Sài Gòn may refer to the kapok (bông gòn) trees that are common around the city.

2.
Location in Vietnam and Southern Vietnam

3.
Saigon Railway Station retains the traditional name used informally since the 1620s.

4.
Location of the hexagonal Gia Dinh Citadel (r) and Cholon area (tilted square, left) in 1815. Today this forms the area of Ho Chi Minh City.

South Vietnam
–
South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam, was a state governing the southern half of Vietnam from 1955 to 1975. It received international recognition in 1949 as the State of Vietnam, the term South Vietnam became common usage in 1954, when the Geneva Conference provisionally partitioned Vietnam into communist and non-communist parts. The R

1.
About 1 million Vietnamese refugees left the newly created communist North Vietnam during Operation "Passage to Freedom" (October 1954).

2.
Flag

3.
A woman casting her ballot in the 1967 Elections in the Republic of Vietnam

4.
Scene of a Việt Cộng bombing in a residential area of Saigon, 1965.

Formosa
–
Taiwan is an island in East Asia, located some 180 kilometres off the southeastern coast of mainland China across the Taiwan Strait. It has an area of 35,883 km2 and spans the Tropic of Cancer, the East China Sea lies to the north, the Philippine Sea to the east, the Luzon Strait directly to the south and the South China Sea to the southwest. There

1.
Taiwan is mostly mountainous in the east, with gently sloping plains in the west. The Penghu Islands are west of Taiwan.

2.
Taiwan lies on the western edge of the Philippine Plate

3.
Shiukuluan River in Hualien County

4.
The San Guang River in northwestern Taiwan

South Korea
–
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea, is a sovereign state in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. The earliest Korean pottery dates to 8000 BC, with three kingdoms flourishing in the 1st century BC and its rich and vibrant culture left 19 UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritages of Humanity, the third largest in

1.
Flag

2.
Balhae and Silla, 830 CE

3.
Jikji, the first known book printed with movable metal type in 1377. Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris

U.S. West Coast
–
The West Coast or Pacific Coast is the coastline along which the contiguous Western United States meets the North Pacific Ocean. As a region, this term most often refers to the states of California. More specifically, it refers to an area defined on the east by the Cascade Range, Sierra Nevada and Mojave Desert, the U. S. Census groups the five sta

1.
The states shown in dark red are included in the term West Coast or Pacific Coast.

Indian Ocean
–
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the worlds oceanic divisions, covering 70,560,000 km2. It is bounded by Asia on the north, on the west by Africa, on the east by Australia, the Indian Ocean is known as Ratnākara, the mine of gems in ancient Sanskrit literature, and as Hind Mahāsāgar, in Hindi. The northernmost extent of the Indian Ocean is

1.
The economically important Silk Road (red) and spice trade routes (blue) were blocked by the Ottoman Empire in ca. 1453 with the fall of the Byzantine Empire. This spurred exploration, and a new sea route around Africa was found, triggering the Age of Discovery.

2.
Extent of the Indian Ocean according to the CIA World Factbook

3.
British heavy cruisers Dorsetshire and Cornwall under Japanese air attack and heavily damaged on 5 April 1942

4.
A dhow off the coast of Kenya

Circumnavigated the globe
–
Circumnavigation means to travel all the way around the entire planet, or an island, or continent. This article is concerned with circumnavigation of the Earth, the first known circumnavigation of Earth was the Magellan-Elcano expedition, which sailed from Seville, Spain, in 1519 and returned in 1522 after crossing the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian

1.
Jason Lewis of Expedition 360 pedaling his boat Moksha on the River Thames in London, shortly before completing the first human-powered circumnavigation of the Earth (2007)

2.
In 2012, the Swiss boat PlanetSolar became the first ever solar electric vehicle to circumnavigate the globe

3.
A replica of Magellan's Nao Victoria, the first vessel to circumnavigate the planet

Panama Canal
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The Panama Canal is an artificial 48-mile waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a key conduit for maritime trade. The original locks are 33.5 metres wide, a third, wider lane of locks was constructed between September 2007 and May 2016. The expanded canal began

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A schematic of the Panama Canal, illustrating the sequence of locks and passages

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Ferdinand de Lesseps

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Excavator at work, in Bas Obispo, 1886

Suez Canal
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The Suez Canal is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez. It was constructed by the Suez Canal Company between 1859 and 1869, after 10 years of construction, it was officially opened on November 17,1869. It extends from the terminus of Port Said to the southern terminus

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Suez Canal

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Northern outlet of the Suez

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Bathymetric chart, northern Gulf of Suez, route to Cairo, 1856.

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1881 drawing of the Suez Canal.

Gibraltar
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Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula. It has an area of 6.7 km2 and shares its border with Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the landmark of the region. At its foot is a populated city area, home to over 30,000 Gibraltarians. An Anglo-Dutch force captured Gibraltar from Spain in 1704 during th

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View of the northern face of the Moorish Castle 's Tower of Homage. Built in the 14th century, it is the only Marinid construction outside Africa.

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Flag

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The last of Gibraltar, by Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau.

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John Mackintosh Square entrance to the Gibraltar Parliament.

Cape Town
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Cape Town is a coastal city in South Africa. It is the second-most populous urban area in South Africa after Johannesburg and it is also the capital and primate city of the Western Cape province. As the seat of the Parliament of South Africa, it is also the capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality, th

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View of Table Bay with ships of the Dutch East India Company, c. 1683

Durban, South Africa
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Durban is the largest city in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal. Durbans metropolitan municipality ranks third among the most populous areas in South Africa after Johannesburg. It is also the second most important manufacturing hub in South Africa after Johannesburg and it forms part of the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality. Durban is f

Kenya
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Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country in Africa and a founding member of the East African Community. Its capital and largest city is Nairobi and it is bordered by Tanzania to the south and southwest, Uganda to the west, South Sudan to the north-west, Ethiopia to the north and Somalia to the north-east. Kenya covers 581,309 km2, and

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A giraffe at Nairobi National Park, with Nairobi's skyline in background

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The Babcock & Wilcox nuclear steam generator is seen at the company's plant at Barberton, Ohio prior to shipment via the Penn Central Railroad to a Duke Energy site in Oconee, S.C. This generator can convert more than 10 million pounds of water per hour into steam.

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USS Lakewood Victory (AK-236) at anchor, probably when she returned to San Francisco in March 1946 after a postwar voyage to the Western Pacific. Her armament had been removed, probably during repair work at Puget Sound in October and November 1945.

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Ex-USS Provo Victory (AK-228) in Pope & Talbot colors. As Lloyd's Index of 1948 states Pope having been the charterer then (in the early Fifties it was American Foreign), this picture dates apparently from 1948.

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Antares (AKS-33) with a Sikorsky HUS-1 Seahorse helicopter hovering over her stern, as seen from the attack aircraft carrier USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVA-42) on 7 March 1963. The guided-missile frigate USS Dahlgren (DLG-12) is in the background.

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USS Gambier Bay, burning from earlier gunfire damage, is bracketed by a salvo from a Japanese heavy cruiser (faintly visible in the background, center-right) shortly before sinking during the Battle off Samar.